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Set up application impersonation for on-premise Exchange/Office365
edited by on August 28th 2014, at 13:11
For migrations from other e-mail platforms to Exchange, you probably want to have full access enabled for a certain Exchange-account to facilitate the migration without having to set up complex access rights. Exchange has something called application impersonation, which allows a user to impersonate other users to access individual mailboxes, which comes in very handy during a migration.

In order to set up application impersonation, you need access to the Exchange Management Shell (EMS), with an account which has permissions to set up access rights.

Exchange 2007 does not support application impersonation as in Exchange 2010 and up. Impersonation does exist but has to be set on each indivi  ...
 
Enable Basic Authentication for Exchange Web Services
edited by on August 28th 2014, at 13:09

If for some reason you need to enable Basic Authentication, you can do so quickly through the Exchange Management Shell. This is sometimes needed if you're migrating to Exchange from another (third-party) e-mail provider.

If you do not know what Basic Authentication is, you do not need this!

Start up EMS as an account which has the required permissions to make changes to the virtual directories used by Exchange. Then, run this:

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "EWS (Default Web Site)" -BasicAuthentication $true

Note that Office365 has Basic Authentication enabled by default.

 
Veeam: VSSControl error 0x8004230f
edited by on August 27th 2014, at 11:00
When using Veeam to back up your VMs, and you get the following error on one or more VMs:

Error: VSSControl: -2147212529 Backup job failed.Discovery phase failed.Cannot add volumes to the snapshot set.Cannot add a volume to the snapshot set. Volume name: [\\?\Volume{6c169bc7-d7bf-11e0-b074-806e6f6e6963}\].Cannot add volume to the set of volumes that should be shadowed.VSS error: VSS_E_UNEXPECTED_PROVIDER_ERROR. Code:0x8004230f

According to KB1785, this is because of a third party VSS provider, present on the VM. If more than the default software provider is installed, another third party backup software suite may have enabled their provider on the VM, causing the initiation of a VSS backup  ...
 
Office 2013 proofing tools
edited by on August 26th 2014, at 12:48

Direct links to the proofing tools. Select a language and download its proofing tools for free:

 
Limit memory usage of Windows Internal Database
edited by on August 26th 2014, at 12:13
If the Windows Internal Database, used by WSUS, and which is actually an embedded SQL Server, is eating all of your memory, you can limit its memory usage the same way you would with a real SQL Server.

Open an elevated command prompt and launch the SQL prompt:

For WSUS4 (on Server 2012):

osql -E -S \.pipeMicrosoft##WIDtsqlquery

For WSUS3 (on Server 2008, 2008R2 and SBS 2008/2011)

osql -E -S \.pipemssql$microsoft##sseesqlquery

This will log you in with the current credentials (which is why it has to be an elevated command prompt). The SQL prompt (1>) is shown.

Enter the following commands to initiate advanced configuration:

exec sp_configure 'show advanced option', '1';reconfigure;  ...
 
ADFS 3.0 (2012 R2) hangs on startup
edited by on August 25th 2014, at 12:30
When running ADFS 3.0 On a Windows 2012 R2 domain controller, on a reboot, the Active Directory Federation Services service may not start up properly, and may not subsequently not service requests. The Services management snap-in shows the service with a status of Starting.

The reason for this is an error during the deployment of ADFS where a dependent service, the Microsoft Key Distribution Service, is not set to start automatically, causing ADFS not to start up properly until that particular service is also started.

The solution is quite simple: in the Services management snap-in, find the service called Microsoft Key Distribution Service, and set its startup type to Automatic.

After th  ...
 
Manually truncate Exchange database logs
edited by on August 22nd 2014, at 12:44
In case you need to manually truncate the database logs of your Exchange server, you can follow the steps below. You'll need sufficient permissions and access to the Exchange Management Shell.

Caution!
Be cautious when you perform this action, as making mistakes here could cause database corruption and loss of data. Don't do this during production hours because this will temporarily make some (or all) mailboxes unavailable! As always, it's a good idea to have a working backup before attempting this.

Open the Exchange Management Shell.

If you don't know the physical path of your database, locate it first:

Get-MailboxDatabase | Select Name,EdbFilePath,LogFolderPath

You'll notice the datab  ...
 
Manually remove Exchange-attributes from an AD object
edited by on August 20th 2014, at 10:12

Exchange stores plenty of things in Active Directory, including mailbox information for each account. In case of a deinstallation of Exchange, this information usually remains behind, making it impossible to perform a new clean installation of Exchange and assigning a new mailbox to this user.

I found a solution here: http://www.telnetport25.com/2009/09/forcing-the-removal-of-exchange-attributes-on-a-directory-user-the-removeexchangeattributes-tool%E2%80%A6/

This command-line tool allows you to query and/or remove Exchange-attributes on AD objects (such as users and groups).

 
"VMware Image Customization in progress" displayed repeatedly
edited by on August 14th 2014, at 14:17
In certain cases when deploying machines from a template using deployment customization, parts of this process may fail. As a result, upon each reboot, the system may try to re-run the customization process, and the following message is displayed at each startup:

VMware Image Customization in progress

To remove any pending sysprep customization routine, you can manually remove the reference to it by editing the Windows Registry

Start regedit.exe.

Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\.

Change the value of BootExecute. Remove the part that says sysprepDecryptor.exe. Leave the other parts of the value as they were (so only remove the one w  ...
 
Set/clear a bit
edited by on August 13th 2014, at 09:16

A reminder to myself...

Set a bit:

Var |= Bit;

Clear a bit:

Var &= ~Bit;
 
Getting your Windows Phone to sync with Zune again
edited by on July 4th 2014, at 13:59
Several Windows Phone devices, such as the Nokia Lumia series, may have trouble syncing with Zune. The device is correctly seen in Device Manager but Zune simply says it can't connect to the device, and that you need to turn it off and on again. Removing and reinstalling Zune does not help, nor does rebooting the phone.

Most of the time, the problem is caused by an invalid certificate. This usually occurs after updating Zune, or after installing other Windows Updates. You can recreate the certificate by stopping Zune, removing the certificate from the user's certificate store, then start Zune again.

To remove the certificate:

Completely stop Zune if it's running.

Open Certificate Manager  ...
 
Importance of channel selection in Wi-Fi
edited by on June 25th 2014, at 14:10

A very interesting read about Wi-Fi implementations and its pitfalls in larger deployments, in particular about the usage of channels and the importance of channel plans.

http://blogs.aerohive.com/blog/the-wireless-lan-training-blog/wifi-back-to-basics-24-ghz-channel-planning

 
SFTP in Windows Explorer using Swish
edited by on June 25th 2014, at 11:55
There are plenty of tools available, free and otherwise, to provide access to SFTP and SCP servers, with more or less features. Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of extensions out there that properly support SFTP/SCP through Windows Explorer itself, providing a somewhat seamless integration in Windows itself. Although there is the win-sshfs project, but this requires installation of several additional prerequisited software components, making this a less attractive solution. Luckily, there's also Swish.

Swish provides SFTP access from inside Windows Explorer. As it installs as an extension, it has no additional requirements, nor does it need to install some driver or library to work.   ...
 
Configure SNTP and time zone on Dell PowerConnect switches
edited by on June 18th 2014, at 13:50
Configuring NTP for time synchronization on Dell PowerConnect switches is similar to that of Cisco iOS, but with the syntax being a little different.

You need privileged console/SSH/telnet access for this to work.

SW#configureSW(config)#sntp unicast client enableSW(config)#sntp server ip-addressSW(config)#no sntp authenticateSW(config)#end

This will set the NTP server's address to whatever you specify (replace ip-address). To verify, you can run these:

show sntp configuration

This will show you the current NTP settings and status:

SW# show sntp configuration

Time zone configuration was missing for a long time, and was only introduced in more recent firmwares. Check on the Dell website  ...
 
Set up clock, NTP and time zone on Cisco iOS devices
edited by on June 18th 2014, at 13:49
From a logging point of view, it's interesting to have your clock set up correctly on your Cisco switches. Your switch should have these capabilities, but network admins usually "forget" to set these up.

To configure these, you need to have privileged access to your switch using SSH/telnet/console. The following works on any device running iOS (i.e. switches and routers).

Time zones are expressed as a name, followed by an offset. The offset indicates the number of hours from UTC, expressed as -hour or +hour. To know the offset for your time zone, you could look at the World Time Zone map.

In my case, for Central European Time, I would set it to this:

SW(config)# clock t  ...
 
Set up an NTP server on Debian Linux (the quick way)
edited by on June 18th 2014, at 11:53

The quick and dirty way to set up an NTP server on Debian Linux for your network.

This has been tested using Debian 7.0 "Wheezy".

1. Install NTP server:

apt-get install ntp

2. Edit /etc/ntp.conf: add the networks that are allowed to sync with your time server like so (Adjust parameters accordingly.):

restrict 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 nomodify notrap

3. Restart the NTP service:

/etc/init.d/ntp restart

4. Set your device/computer/server to use your NTP server

 
Pin apps on network to taskbar/start menu
edited by on June 10th 2014, at 16:56
Applications that reside on the network (e.g. \\server\dir\app.exe) usually can't be pinned on the taskbar in Windows 7, due to restriction posed on you by Microsoft. The options for pinning just are not present, even when you first create a shortcut to the app.

A simple solution is to fool Windows 7 that the app resides locally. In short, this is done by pinning a local app (say, Calculator), then changing that shortcut to point to your network app.

Pin any local app to the taskbar (e.g. Calculator).

Navigate to %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar. You'll find a shortcut to the app you just pinned.

Change the properties of the pinne  ...
 
Error STATUS_SUCCESS when deploying KMS on 2012 R2
edited by on May 8th 2014, at 12:28

When deploying KMS on a Server 2012 R2, you may run into the error message saying nothing more but STATUS_SUCCESS.

The reason for this is that the KMS TCP Listening Port in the wizard, is by default set to 0, which is of course incorrect. Typing in the correct default value (1688) resolves the issue.

 
How to set proxyserver for Windows Update (WinHTTP)
edited by on March 24th 2014, at 14:00
You can easily set up your proxy settings for Windows Update and other background processes by using the commandline utility netsh.

Show the current settings:

netsh winhttp show proxy

Set up a basic proxy server:

netsh winhttp set proxy ip-or-host:port

Set up a proxy with a bypass list: "ip-or-domain" will not use the proxy:

netsh winhttp set proxy myproxy:80 ";ip-or-domain"

Set up individual proxy servers for each protocol accept for those in the bypass list:

netsh winhttp set proxy proxy -server= "http=ip-or-host:80 ;https=ip-or-host:88" bypass-list= "*.contoso.com"

To import the settings from Internet Explorer:

netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie

To clear and reset t  ...
 
Hyperlinks in Outlook signature being replaced
edited by on March 6th 2014, at 15:18

When your hyperlinks in your Outlook signature gets replaced by so-called "field codes", you may have inadvertedly pressed the magic key combo Alt+F9:

You can reverse the effect by pressing it again. This only works when the message field has focus.

 
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