Windows

I started receiving the following error in my event logs on SBS 2003 due to the fact my SBS server could no long contact time.windows.com.


W32Time
Event 47
Time Provider NtpClient: No valid response has been received from manually configured peer time.windows.com,0x1 after 8 attempts to contact it. This peer will be discarded as a time source and NtpClient will attempt to discover a new peer with this DNS name.


To correct itchange your time servers to use something decent such as the pool.ntp.org servers for your location. I'm in the UK so I used this command on the cmd line:

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 1.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 2.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 3.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1"

Problem solved! Read more »

If you backup a Windows 2003 Small Business Server than you may have noticed that even though the backup appears to have completed successfully in the Server Manager, hidden away in the log there is this error message:

"SqlServerWriter" has reported an error 0x800423f4. The backup may continue, but the data for this component will not be backed up correctly.

After a lot of Googling I finally found the issue is the log on for the server SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS).

The user on my server was configured as .\Administrator, Change it to DOMAIN\Administrator and restart the service. All should be ok on your next backup.

LINKS
http://www.winvistatips.com/ms-sql-2005-express-broke-vss-sbs-backup-t63...
http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=912414 Read more »

So you've got a few hundred gigabytes of Windows Update data and you can't move them to a network share because shifting the content to a UNC path doesn't work? No problem!

After a lot of research and a few headaches the easiest way I found to do this was creating a virtual iSCSI target.

First thing to do is:

1. Download StarWind Free Edition
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-free
You have to register for a account but then its free

2. Install this on your SAN/NAS/Storage server Read more »

I look after a Windows 2003 server at work and had the problem where I forgot to enable the GPO 'Add the Administrators security group to roaming user profiles'. I've searched around and couldn't find a fix that didn't involve recreating all user profiles.

I actually worked out a way to fix this today without taking ownership of the folder, or recreating all the profiles. Here's how you can do it.

1. Log on to a machine as the problem user

2. Browse to you network share with the users profiles, usually something like \\***YOURSERVER***\Profiles$\

3. Right click on the users profile folder, go to the 'Security' tab and add the 'Administrators' group and give them 'Full Control'

4. Job done!

You MAY have to make standard users an Administrator temporarily to browse to the profile share but you can set it back after. Read more »

I had a complaint today that accessing a Sharepoint volume mounted as a network drive was very slow under Windows 7. I hadn't noticed this myself but having a look it was in fact true. There is an incredibly easy fix for it.

Open Internet Explorer
Open Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings
Disable 'Automatically detect settings'

Open your WebDAV or Sharepoint volume and all is OK again!

I had a major problem at work today. I found sharing a StorNext volume via SMB on Windows Server 2008 makes subfolders and shares inaccessible to other Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 clients! However the same folders ARE accessible using Mac OS or Windows XP.

It turns out that SMB 2.0/2.1 is the culprit. If you havn't noticed this problem yet you will when your folders/shares have more than 19 files or subfolders within them.

The only solution is to disable SMB 2.0/2.1 which is easily done. Read more »

After completing a VMWare ESXi 4 restore of an SBS 2003 server I discovered that one user could not receive any emails from internally or externally. They all backed up in the 'Local delivery' queue that you can see in the Exchange System Manager. The user could however send mails and receive junk oddly.

I read that this was down to the Mailbox Store being corrupted which I really did not want to have to restore. It turns out just that mailbox was corrupted in some way so that would have been a lot of extra work for one mailbox.

You're not really supposed to be able to delete mailboxes and re-create them in SBS as its tightly woven into creating new users but this was my only option. Here's how to delete the users mailbox, recreate it and hopefully get mails flowing again as it worked for me! Read more »

I had a lot of trouble trying to browse UDF 2.5 when archiving documents off to Blu-ray discs. I was using the UDF 2.5 driver from Toshiba which everyone seemed to be using but if I tried to run an .exe off a BD-R it would instantly BSOD!

I've since found out that the free Nero InCD driver supports UDF 2.5 and also doesn't seem to cause a BSOD everytime I need to run a setup off BD-R!

Download it here...

http://www.nero.com/eng/tools-utilities.html