Kicking and Screaming I am Bloggin

New Blog Site if you looking for HandyAndy

2007-07-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

Hi Gang,

My pal Vlad convinced me to try his blogging service and since I liked the way I could use my own url Blog.SBS-Rocks.com I gave it a try. So far I really like it so if you are looking for new content from me take a look at the new blog http://blog.sbs-rocks.com

See Y'all Round the virtual watercooler,
HA

Best Kept Secret in SBS Land

2007-06-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Back in April one of my favorite presenters was made an MVP for SBS and no one ever heard about it. Turns out MS had an obsolete address for him so not even he knew, the announcement message went to the proverbial bit bucket. Well due to the keen eye of the SBS Diva herself all has been rectified, so please help me welcome Chris Rue https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile=75ea8010-5d0e-453d-8b63-ee53da3ddadc check out his own announcement at http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2007/06/the-unknown-mvp.html

Community Vlad Points the Way

2007-06-25T05:29:00.000-07:00

OK I admit it, I still forget to come add stuff here.
The other day Vlad wrote a really thought provoking piece called http://www.vladville.com/2007/06/why-are-we-losing-these-great-community-resources.html and I blasted it out across the lists, but forgot to post it here also.

Since then he has gotten a lot of responses saying what can I do, so he once again wrote a great articled called http://www.vladville.com/2007/06/how-can-i-contribute-to-the-community.html. About the only thing I take exception to in the article is how he sluff's off folks with stage fright or what ever you want to call it. I personally do quite a bit for the community, but am just unable to get up on stage and present or profess or what ever you want to call it. To me it is a real stumbling block. So don't let his comments discourage you, take it from me, there are still many things you can do to contribute without hopping up on the stage.

Don't just go to the meetings to be entertained, offer up some content. Provide feedback, I run a group of about 70 folks (on our list anyways) about 2 dozen of whom show up regularly. Yet if I send out any message to the group that requires a response, I can count on 4 for sure and maybe 2 or 3 others that's it. Yet if you ask the majority of them they will tell you they are active in the community. Take a look at how you respond. When you go to a TS2 or TechNet event do you make your presence know to the presenter? Do you mention your group, they will be happy put in a plug for it. Do you offer help? It doesn't cost a thing, but it does help our community. Become one of the folks that answers more questions than you ask. It doesn't matter, answer the easy ones and ask the hard ones, just start to contribute.

I am not going to relist everything he posted, it was a great list. But just keep in mind what he said was not the gospel on how it has to be done, it was meant to get you thinking about what you could do. There are no set rules it is a freely developing community, so just jump in and join the fun.

Shadow Protect Enable Lan Communications

2007-06-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

New Article on my SBS-Rocks.com website
Shadow Protect Enable Lan Communications
a.k.a. How to create an XP Firewall Exception GPO in SBS

So as you may know I have been working with imaging products and have pretty much settled on Storage Craft's products.Well I hit a road block the other day trying to control the desktopversions of Shadow Protect from the Shadow Protect Server Console.

This article explains how to allow these communications as well as being a good intro to the XP Firewall GPO.

Enjoy,
HA

Updated 6/22/2007 Thankx to Bob Haley who just wrote and sent me an ADM Template for Shadow Protect, I have updated the article on my site with the new instructions Shadow Protect Enable Lan Communications

Hotfixes get easier to access, I get egg on my face

2007-06-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

So I called in again today for my second private hotfix and the after I got to the third guy (he was a developer engineer) he said, did you read the KB? I said of course I did, that is why I am calling. He said you probably didn't notice, but that KB is part of a new trial and the line you expected to say call in for the hotfix actually was a link to the hotfix on the connect site. It is still not a full public supported hotfix, but it is sure easier to get. Know that I know to look for it, I sure like this new program. And now that you know where to look you won't end up with egg on your face, like I did.

If you look at the screenshot below the key line to look for when you read a KB is the line I have in red. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go take a shower to wash the egg off my face.

WSS 3.0 minor snag on SBS

2007-06-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to have a go at installing WSS 3.0 as I need to roll it out to a client site this weekend. You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D51730B5-48FC-4CA2-B454-8DC2CAF93951&displaylang=en if you want a copy.

I am following the great paper the SBS Team supplied describing the side by side install process required for SBS which you can get at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928095

I went along with the directions and it installed just fine, but after the install it tries to run the configuration wizard and gets stuck on step 2 setting up the configuration database. Thinking maybe I hadn't had enough coffee yet and missed a step, I uninstalled it and tried again, some thing same spot.

Having learned from the SBS Diva herself (thanks Susan) I dumped the error message into google and found a thread in the MS public newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs&tid=1ecd5642-5f93-402e-b84e-1885d2170cbd&m=1&p=1 with the exact same problem and a response from a css guy (thankx Terence Liu) saying call in for a hotfix KB934790

Well after appling that hotfix the configuration wizard completed just fine.

If you need a hot fix in the US call 1-800-936-3500 if you are ouside the US you can get the correct number to call from http://support.microsoft.com/

Remember when calling in, click your heals 3 times and repeat "There is no place like my SBS Community"

Gotta go play with my cool new SharePoint site now, c ya later,

CRM Over the Internet, Finally

2007-05-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well it was almost a year ago when I first started fighting with CRM SBE trying to publish it over the internet. It has been a painful process and I have called on some of the smartest people I know to try and get this done. We have gotten very close, but have not found a complete solution until yesterday when I got a note from a guy I have never met in Brazil with the missing pieces. So Thank You to Marcelo Sauaf! I hope to meet you and buy you a drink one day soon.

HaveI told you all lately how much I think this community rocks!

If you would like step by step instructions to publish CRM SBE over the internet, see my site at http://www.sbs-rocks.com/CRM/CRMSBEviaISA2004.htm

And they told me it couldn't be done,
HA

WSUS 3.0 on SBS 2003 with CRM-SBE

2007-05-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

So I am a little behind and haven't installed WSUS 3.0 yet and hearing all the success stories of how easy it installs I jump ring in on my production server, install the prerequisites, KB927891 , MMC 3.0 & Report Viewer and then reboot the server. When she comes back up I run setup for WSUS 3.0 and it is going along very nicely until near the end when it dies a horrible death.

So I hit OK and get

And once more and get

So you might have guessed at this point I wasn't smiling, so I did what anyone in my position would do, no I didn't start crying, I pinged the community to see if anyone had any ideas. Sometimes just talking through a problem bring the obvious to light. Yours and my favorite detective Susan found in the error log where the W3SVC service had trouble stopping so opened a DOS Box and try to stop it manually, it did in fact stop, but it took a little longer than one would expect. When I was explaining this of course I pointed out that it was normal due to CRM being on the box so there was more to stop. So that's when she stated the obvious solution that I had looked right past, stop the CRM service before you run the WSUS setup.

So hopefully I can save you the agervation of the initial install failure and let you know about this before you try. Once I stopped the CRM services the install went through without a hitch (ymmv), unfortunately the second time through it doesn't do an upgrade, it does a full install so you have to reset all the options.

Storage Craft Shadow Protect IT Edition

2007-05-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight I did a demo of Storage Craft Shadow Protect IT Edition 3.0 for my IT Pro Group, Triad SBS Group and they asked me to post the steps I followed during the demo. So for all of them and anyone else who may be interested here is what I did to image an SBS 2003 Premium with CRM SBE from a single processor Intel desktop class machine to a dual processor Intel Xeon server. This system had 6 partitions and was about 24 Gb of used disk space. I completed the entire process in a little over an hour enlarging all the partitions in the process. What follows are my notes to myself to do the demo.

1. Make sure DSRM password is known!!
2. Make sure drive lettering is known!!
3. Make sure IP Addressing is know and which nic will be which!!
4. Backup from live SBS (20 min) (did ya notice nothing is installed to the system)
5. Mention issue with vpc and usb drives, recommend VM Ware for testing to avoid usb problems
6. Restore 6 partitions and run HIR (20 min) (don’t forget, refresh volumes as you create partitions)
7. Boot DSRM load Intel Inf’s & fix drive lettering on this pass (10 min)
8. Make sure nics are connected to active hub/switch
9. Boot Safe w/network (10 min) (will need to wait for network timeout)
10. Check if nic drivers loaded (load if necessary) configure IP addresses and order (5 min)
11. Final Boot (5 min)
12. Rerun CEICW, check logs (5 min)

Can Not View mdi Files, know issue

2007-04-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

Well it appears not to be a know issue to anyone I sent the file to nor was it to me until a few minutes ago.
It seems that the default install of Office 2007 sets Microsoft Document Imaging to "Install on first use" however seems there is a giltich because instead of installing it says I don;t know what program to open this file with you are on your own. OK so I may have paraphrased a bit :>)
Anyways if you find yourself in this predicament, here is your solution http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926198

Epidemic of servers not being able to sync their time

2007-04-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hi Gang,

I don't know if you have noticed or not (maybe you are not effected) but there seems to be an epidemic of servers not being able to sync their time recently.
I have found this little batch file to fix it for my client's servers, you may want to change the time source to one local to you, I have had good luck with the one in the file.
This is for servers that have been working fine and all of a sudden just stopped, the M&M's article on syncing time on SBS is still your best bet if you never got your time to sync on your network.

Here are the commands;

w32tm /configure /manualpeerlist:time-a.nist.gov,0x8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync
pause

Paste them to txt file and change the extension to cmd and save it on your server's desktop you can just double-click to run the commands.
Watch the last command and make sure it says the sync was successful.

You can get a list of time servers from http://tf.nist.gov/service/time-servers.html

I have just spent the weekend in DST HE!!

2007-02-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

Hi Gang,

I started to send this out to my group as an e-mail, but Mark Crall had just been asking me about a blog, and it reminded me I had signed up for this thing ages ago and never used it, so here we go.

Well I have just spent the weekend in DST HE!!

I really tried to follow along the directions outlined at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930879 but I don't think they are possible to follow, well not successfully anyways.
Of course your circumstances may be different but here is what worked for me for my SBS servers.

I started Friday and made sure all my wsus servers were sync'd and then I approved all the updates to be installed early Saturday morning.
Saturday morning early I let the server updates install and rebooted all the servers. I spent the rest of Saturday banging my head against the wall trying to get the script to run, reading more docs than I ever care to again, and not having any success. I went to bed horribly frustrated. I figured I was just tired and not thinking clearly. Sunday morning after an hour of banging my head again, I decided to try another approach.

Since I could never get the script they supplied to run, I finally gave up and did it the old fashioned way.
I went into ESM and removed the explicit denies on the admin accounts and granted the administrator (the 500 account) full rights on the entire exchange server. If you don't know how to do this, no problem read about it here http://www.petri.co.il/grant_full_mailbox_rights_on_exchange_2000_2003.htm

Then I installed Outlook Time Zone Data Tool on a workstation (note after it installs it wants to run, just cancel it), get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e343a233-b9c8-4652-9dd8-ae0f1af62568&DisplayLang=en

I then created a outlook profile on the workstation I had installed the tool on, using the domain administrator account and set it to be the default, don't forget to uncheck cached mode (hint if you want to keep this profile make a copy of it, the exchange tool does not leave it clean, when you are done you can delete the default profile and replace it with your clean copy).

Then I followed the very well done instructions supplied by the exchange team at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/02/14/435267.aspx
Of course to follow these you will need the LegacyDN tool to verify your ldap string, get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5EF7786B-A699-4AAD-B104-BF9DE3F473E5&displaylang=en
And while your downloading grab the Exchange Calendar Update Tool, get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A9336886-4B28-4010-9416-36D38429438D&displaylang=en, you will need it also. Don't forget, do not install it in the default directory, there is a bug if you do it will not work.

By following this approach I was able to update 5 servers with only one error that I know of so far :>)
Oh Ya, if you run CRM there will be a tool to update it on Feb 28th, read about it here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925874

Andy Goodman, SBS-MVP, SBSC, MSA, MPAN
~Founding Father SMBTN Triad NC Group
~Co-Author Advanced Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices
~Owner DownHome Computers
~Host of the Global SBS Chat
~A.K.A HandyAndy on the SBS forum
~"If you can't find the key to success, pick the lock."~~~~~Author Unknown

Against All Reason

2006-09-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

Ok so I admit it, I don't like blogs.
But since I was afraid of losing SBS-Rocks on this site like I lost HandyAndy I decided to grab it before it was too late.

If you know me you know I run www.sbs-rocks.com with how to articles on SBS and CRM that don't require payment or signin to read. It started as a handy way to leave notes for myself. I may use this for the same function as it does not require frontpage like my website does, so I can post from anywhere.

I hold Susan Bradley & Anne Stanton personally responsilble for brow beating me into submission about blogs.

And I blame Ken Edwards for me being at this site, as I came here to read his posting.

So it remains to be seen if I remember to come back here and post stuff or if I will forget about it as I seem to do with my MSN site