To those that attempted to get the domain over the weekend, and a little bit at the end of last week…..my bad.
I transferred domains to my “new” server (in my office) and checked the page – it worked… But only one way. I noticed that my 404’s were off the chart before I caught the issue.
All is well now.
I’m one of those people that loves to experiment, push limits (and buttons) to see what happens. As much as I enjoy Hyper-V as a product, I’ll go ahead and disagree with Microsoft on this. You SHOULD NOT INSTALL Hyper-V on SBS2008…
The last 3 times I’ve dealt with this issue, I’ve installed Hyper-V and had weird network problems. This has been everything from a flat out corrupted Intel based driver causing blue screens to the system failing to let DNS traffic through – IP based traffic worked, oddly enough. Various tests within Hyper-V pretty much point to a network based problem once the adapters are installed. Now, in my situation, the Legacy Adapters were the cause of the problem, but you must use those to really work in FreeBSD/Linux.
So, moral of the story: Stay away from Hyper-V while you’re on SBS2008. I install stuff to make it break and to learn, but even this got me in an uproar.
Next up for me: Burning down the server, installing Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, Exchange 2010 and a few other Alpha/Beta packages. I can just hear the fun starting already!
Over the last three months, business has picked up for me with Protocol16, my computer repair business. At the same time, I have less and less time to run through projects and blogging since I continue to blog on Protocol16 and work on other projects for the business.
As such, I’ll probably stop blogging on WebTek Concepts, aka: ECM Universe. I’ve owned the domain for many years and it’s time to give up the ghost there. It’s been great, and I’ve had a long run, but I just don’t have the time anymore. The domain expires in April and I’ll probably let it die in peace, unless anyone wants it (for a small fee, otherwise you get to compete with anyone else that wants it). The stories there will not be backed up, the domain will not return to what it once was and that will be that (at this exact moment, you won’t find anything there…).
Anyway, to move on to Whichwaydoigo.com, I’ll continue blogging here and there on Microsoft topics. I’ll actually release a story here soon about Hyper-V, which I’m starting to dislike. My goal is to get another Cert in SBS2008 here shortly, courtesy of the great Microsoft Partner Team and become a full on Microsoft Small Business Specialist. I’m not a fan boy, but I have been using their products since the DOS days.
Other than that, I’ve got some pretty cool projects going on with my company, and if things pan out, it will grow pretty quickly and you’ll be reading more and more technical stories.
So, yes it’s been slow, but no, I’m not gone.
Justin
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but I figured I need to start up again. After moving into my official office, I had to tweak a few things on my server (commercial connection vs home connection) and ran into a weird issue.
For those that are noticing that when you restart your server, whether it be a dedicated Exchange box or an SBS box, you and all your Exchange users may notice that email “doesn’t work” anymore.
You may also notice that sending mail doesn’t work anymore.
Upon logging into your machine, you find that 1 or 2 Services failed to start properly in the Exchange group:
Now, you’ve got email working, but what caused it. A quick check in your event logs lists:
If you did some real digging, you may have seen this as well:
"ERROR: Unable to retrieve internet monitor interface." "ERROR: SybLicense: Failed to create MSXML instance: -2147221008" "ERROR: LICENSING: Invalid initialization parameters!" "ERROR: CoCreateInstance failed in GetLists (0x800401F0)"
What fun. A whole lot of info about…nothing.
So, what caused it and how do you fix it?
Well, in short – you, or someone in a responsible role, caused it. Don’t worry, I did the same thing.
The culprit here is that you installed Forefront Security and failed to renew after the trial period. If you did renew after the trial period, “something” magical and un-wonderful happened – it broke something.
The Fix
This is a two part fix.
If you can’t send mail, follow this link (You can also use this to register the DCOM event ID). I just don’t feel like completely copying KB articles.
If you can send mail, either renew your license with Forefront, disable the Exchange connector, or uninstall Forefront.
From what I’ve seen, Microsoft knows that there is an issue, but officially isn’t calling it a bug yet.
Quick note: If you’ve attempted to install SP2 for Exchange 2007 on SBS 2008, look at this KB Article to help correct issues…
Yes, I’ve been playing with SBS 2008 a lot this week… Here’s an error I ran into fresh out of the box, related to “CompanyWeb” aka: SharePoint/IIS.
Error: Event ID 10016 DistributedCOM
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool
This is related to IISWAM and permissions for it.
Fix:
-In Administrative tools, open Component Services and expand Component Services, Computers, My Computer, DCOM Config
-Look for the IIS WAMREG Admin Service
-Right click and select Properties and then select the Security tab
-Click Edit under Launch and Activation Permissions
-Add the Network Service user
-Add Local Activation rights
-Click OK all the way out and close Component Services. You may need to restart…
I ran into this while playing around with a group of computers on my home network.
My Windows 7 Enterprise computer joined after I adjusted some settings, but my Ultimate computer refused to acknowledge that the SBS 2008 server was even there, even though I could hit the SBS website and hit the Share drives on the server.
To get around this, I had to follow this KB Article. Even though DNS was pointing to the SBS server, I wasn’t using a DNS prefix to get things rocking. As soon as I added the prefix, it joined up without complaints. I especially like the integrated user migration tool – saves all kinds of time in a Corp environment.
Long story short, add [yoursbsdomain].local to your DNS prefix and it’ll work.
Justin
If you’ve gone out and downloaded the Windows 7 Beta or RTM ISOs to test in your office, you may have run across a nasty checks & balances bug in SBS2008.
Situation: I have a laptop running Windows 7 Enterprise, attempting to join a freshly installed SBS 2008 domain. Even after Windows Updates, I cannot get the laptop to join the domain. The “http://connect” doesn’t work and if I access the Public Share and attempt to use the manual entry, it fails with an error of: “This computer does not meet the maximum operating system requirements for running client setup.” Fun error right – would would have thought there was a maximum value to join?
Fix: This is actually pretty cut and dry on what you need to do on the SBS server. Check out the official SBS blog page for how to fix this.
Oh, and it’s a Group Policy that’s causing your grief…
Anyone that has ever dealt with VPN knows it’s got some serious downfalls for management, connectivity, etc. Well, with Server 2008 R2, your problems have been solved…
Imagine logging into Windows and being able to type in the standard network share name while on the road in a hotel. At the same time, you’re surfing the net as fast as normal. That isn’t going to happen with standard VPN. You’d have to start up, surf a little, then connect to your VPN. You’d just about be able to grab dinner while Outlook synchronized your email all while you pray that the connection doesn’t drop or stall during a file download. Not anymore…
With R2, there is a new product called DirectAccess. It seamlessly works with Windows 7 to allow your employees the ability to use your network applications, storage and more without needing to deal with logging in, slow connections and more. It doesn’t prompt the user for anything extra than their standard login, there’s no user configuration to deal with and it’s deployable to your remote users through Group Policies. On top of that, it works off a split pipe connection – it knows whether to use your standard internet connection or pass along the request to your corporate server.
The requirements for DirecAccess are:
When I first saw this during a Microsoft conference, I was very excited. While my small business customers won’t use this feature, I completely understand all you guys and girls out there that are pulling your hair out with VPN. If I’ve got you interested, check this video out real quick, it’s pretty close to the demo I saw. DirectAccess is a godsend to the Enterprise administrator. Here’s the Early Adopters Guide, directly from Microsoft.
Over the next few days, I’ll discuss bitlocker improvements as well as some handy tools included in Windows 7 that’ll help all you administrators out there.
Justin
For those that have never worked with SBS 2008, and are mainly beginners, you may want to read an article I wrote for Technibble. Again, this is more for people that freeze at hearing about fixing a server.