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Welcome Back, Kotter!
It’s been over a year, might as well make another post!
Actually, a couple times recently I’ve gotten notifications of pending comments on a post that has helped others out.
I’m a big believer in community sharing, and the satisfaction of helping people out made me decide to get back into it.
Hopefully I’ll be able to generate some more helpful content for this site.
I’ll be easy to find…
Quick reminder, Microsoft Events tomorrow.
If you see me, please say “Hello”, I should be easy to find! 
And don’t forget KCSMB!
We’re meeting tonight (8/14) from 7-9pm at Johnny’s Tavern K-10 & Ridgeview Road location in Olathe.
It’ll be an open forum and we’ll discuss which topics we want to cover the rest of the year.
Hope to see you there, and look for a recap here tomorrow!
Microsoft is coming to town!
In the morning, Technet Event (8/28):
Learn how to save the day with hot new solutions from TechNet Events. Join us for these free sessions and transform your IT environment into a secure and well-managed infrastructure with Microsoft Forefront and Microsoft System Center. You’ll get the inside scoop on Essentials 2007 – a unified management solution that enables IT pros to run a mid-size business environment with greater confidence and efficiency. We’ll also cover the benefits of the new TCP/IP protocol suite and how to tune TCP/IP for top performance. Finally, we’ll explore the next generation of networking features in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista that boost performance, scalability and manageability. Don’t miss TechNet Events in your local area and get IT skills worth celebrating.
And in the afternoon, TS2 Seminar (8/28):
At the August – December TS2 Events, we’ll discuss how you can build a business model that supports your customers’ business goals after you’ve made the initial sale. You’ll learn about the revenue opportunities in Managed Services and the support tools Microsoft has to offer. We’ll cover:• Increasing your revenue opportunities with Managed Services offerings that include System Center Essentials 2007, Forefront Client Security, and Exchange Hosted Services.
• Building a reoccurring revenue model around security management with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer, and Windows Server Update Services.
• Engaging new prospects with Microsoft programs like Windows Genuine Advantage, Competitive Sales Assistance, and the Ready to Go Campaigns.
We value our partner community, and look forward to seeing you at the event in your area.
Perflib errors with Event ID 1017
So one day I’m scrolling through the Server Performance Reports generated by Windows Small Business Server, and I see 2439 Critical errors in the event log on one of the server I manage.
Yes, two thousand four hundred and thirty-nine errors!!!
All but a few were from Perflib with an Event ID of 1017. The event text was the same for all except the service name was “MasSync” for 1/2 and “.NET Framework” for the other half.
Here’s the important part of the error text:
Performance counter data collection from the “MasSync” service has been disabled due to one or more errors generated by the performance counter library for that service. The error(s) that forced this action have…
So, how to clean up these errors?
First, check EventID.Net, great resource. There I was referred to KB248993 for info on how to re-enable the counters in the registry. I tried this for both using the Exctrlst.exe utility, without success. However, in the utility whenever I selected either service, there was information “missing” regarding OpenProcedure, etc. in the window below. That explains why just re-enabling the performance counters didn’t work, they just kept getting disabled when they tried to start up again due to the missing information!
Since the problem seemed to be with the DLL not “doing it’s job” to provide the information needed to run the performance counters, I tried re-registering it, but received an error as well that implied the DLL was the problem.
At this point, I hit the SBSC Managed Newsgroups to see how to proceed. I collected a bunch of data and the Microsoft CSR suggested I replace the offending .DLL file (massync.dll) with a new copy extracted from Exchange SP2. I replaced the .DLL file, re-enabled the counter using Exctrlst.exe, restarted the Remote Registry service, and refreshed the Application log for a few minutes, and the “MasSync” errors were gone!
But, how to get rid of the “.NET Framework” errors?
This server had one user that was using Exchange ActiveSync to connect his Windows Mobile phone to the server, but he was not longer with the company, so I wasn’t as concerned about messing things up with the ActiveSync performance counters (yes, I did have a good backup!) , but this company lives out of Microsoft CRM which is running on this server in addition to all the built-in web goodiness of SBS, so I was much more concerned about messing with anything related to the .NET Framework.
Rather that try to replace any DLLs or reinstall the application, I decided I would rather just remove the performance counter. I’m not sure what in the .NET Framework needs to be monitored anyway.
I found this KB article that describd how to do just this:
From a command prompt, type unlodctr “.NET Framework” and hit Enter. The service name needs to be in quotes if it contains spaces.
Then, go to the registry under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<application>
where <application> is the service name you just removed, in my case .NET Framework, and delete the Performance subkey (make sure you have a backup, etc.)
As with the previous step, restart the Remote Registry service and check the Application log. It should be free of Perflib errors!
Are you ready for trouble?
Karl Palachuk, of Great Little Book publishing and author of Relax Focus Succeed and the associated blog, is looking for some information on Disaster Recovery Planning.
Here’s what Karl has to say:
Hello. I have a quick request for you. I am conducting some research about Disaster Recovery Planning. While I would love your assistance, I am more interested in <b>your clients’</b> responses. There’s a brief survey online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WTK24rWB_2faCBW11PGriRsA_3d_3d. As you’ll see, we’re interested primarily in who has a Disaster Plan, whether they think it’s useful, and where it falls in their priorities. Will you do me a favor? Will you please post an invitation to this survey on any client-facing blogs, newsletters, etc. that you have? I’d like to get as many end-users as possible. I promise I don’t steal your clients The first result of this research will be a white paper on the results. Will there be a book on Disaster Planning? Don’t know. I guess that depends on the survey! Please pass the link above to your clients. The survey will close August 31st.Please take a few minutes to fill out Karl’s survey, and check out his technical books, as well as his personal improvement book and blog, Relax Focus Succeed, and don’t forget to register for his pre-conference sessions at SMBNation 2007. I’ll be there!
KCSMB July Recap
While we locate a new venue for our meetings (stay tuned on this one), a few of us got together for an informal gathering at Johnny’s Tavern last night. There’s not much else around this part of town, but the place was packed!
Could the All-Star game been that big of a draw? I doubt it, although Ichiro’s inside the park home run was pretty cool.
Anyway, those of us there had a good time talking about various subjects, from Scott‘s newfound monitoring product and server room temperature monitoring products, to border crossings and baby burping methods. 
I think the format was well received, since it was informal and the discussion topics were wide ranging so everyone was able to be involved. We’ll likely do something similar for our future meetings, probably once a quarter.
If you weren’t able to make it, hope to see you next month! Watch the website and be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch.
Connecting Entourage 2004 to SBS2003 remotely over IMAP
I setup Small Business Server for a new client, and the owner wanted to be able to access his email from his iMac at home. He could have used OWA, but was familiar with Entourage and wanted to use it.
Not being much of a Mac guy (although I did just buy a used iMac to learn on!), I went to the one place I knew would have information on configuring a Mac: Eriq’s SBS Unleashed book.
Now there’s a ton of great info in there on integrating Macs into an SBS environment, but it didn’t have exactly the scenario I was needing to implement. (IMAP in Entourage from a remote connection).
Now I had already started the IMAP service and set it to Automatic, and forwarded port 143 from the firewall to the server, and used the information in Eriq’s book to configure the settings.
However, I was still getting an error message that the username or password was invalid. Per the SBS Unleashed instructions, I was entering the username/password combo without a domain name. But since it wasn’t working, I tried the domain name in the usual Microsoft format of domain\username and the correct password, but this still didn’t work.
I knew the password was correct, so it had to be something in the way the username was being formatted. I tried using the full internal logon name (username@domain.local), and it worked!
I then configured SMTP to use the same logon information as the IMAP server, and I was able to send/receive email without any further issues.
Again, thanks to Eriq and his great book, or I would have spent a lot more time looking in other places for the answer. And there are a number of scenarios listed in the book on how to configure email on a Mac for access to Exchange, just not this particular scenario.
How many letters in “administrator”?
I need to migrate a SBS2003 R2 server to new hardware, and of course I’d like to do it quickly and easily.
SBSMigration.com is a highly recommended solution for migrating to new hardware, especially when moving between versions, and can be done mostly offline so you can keep your weekend for yourself, but the process can be time-consuming.
StorageCraft has some a great imaging product, including Hardware-independent restore (HiR), but a technician’s license is pricey (although I plan to get one at some point!), and would be the way I’d go, but first I thought I’d try the built-in tools, you know, Windows Backup!
The hardware in this case is similar (Dell PowerEdge 1800 to Dell PowerEdge 1900), but the disk subsystems were dissimilar (CERC 2s to PERC 5/i). But what the heck, let’s give it a shot!
Using the directions in the SBS Backup & Restore whitepaper, I installed SBS from the DVD on the new system, up to the point where the SBS part of the install begins. Canceling the wizard, I then connected the external USB drive with a current backup on it, and started the restore process.
When the restore finished and I was prompted to reboot, I crossed my fingers and prayed that the RAID array would be detected. I decided to boot to Safe Mode first to see how well the restore “took”, and in doing so I was prompted for a number of drivers for the differing hardware, including the RAID drivers and the network card. Great, no problem on the PERC 5/i drivers, but the network card…
Well, I had the Broadcom drivers on a flash drive, so I ran the install routine, which just extracted the files to the root of the drive. I then picked up the wizard and pointed it to look at the driver location and it installed the drivers, but I received the “There was a problem installing this hardware” error when it finished.
I remembered a post I saw in one of the YahooGroups mailing lists that I subscribe to that you couldn’t install drivers this way on new Dell servers, that you actually had to run the Setup.exe install to properly install the drivers.
OK, let’s try that. I found the setup.exe in C:\Broadcom\W2K3\Driver_Management_Apps_Installer and double-clicked it to run. It started up, then stopped with an error: “Error 1325. administrator is not a valid short file name”.
Off to Google I go, but most of the info I found was related to reinstalling Office. Not what I’m looking for.
Now, this is a single NIC server, so without the drivers installed, there were several things “broken”, which I expected. I noticed that when opening Windows Explorer I was getting an error that the My Documents folder could not be accessed via the fileshare. Makes sense, no network drivers, no network card, no network, no filesharing. The original server had the My Documents Folder Redirection Group Policy applied, so Explorer was expecting to access it through the file share of the system. One of the results Google returned showed an error similar to mine, but where the long filename in my case was “administrator”, this person was getting the error with “documents”.
At this point I’m guessing that the installer routine is trying to create a temporary file/folder in the logged on user’s (Administrator) My Documents folder, and is failing because it’s not accessible. Alright, let’s just right click on the My Documents folder and point it back to the local file. Oops! Can’t do that, it’s configured via Group Policy. OK, disable that particular GP, go to Start, Run, gpupdate /force, try again. Nope, still applying the policy. OK, let’s edit the policy. Wrong again! There’s an error accessing the policy. Hmm.
Wait, “administrator” is a long (>8 character) filename, but “temp” isn’t.
Create a new user named “temp”, apply the administrator template, log on as that user, run the install and…
Success! The drivers install, I reboot, reset the IP address (using the wizard!) to the same address the old server was using, checked that all services were starting as the should, etc.
Error logs are now clean except for the 7:00 & 12:00 Volume Shadow Copies aren’t being created, but that appears to be related to a GUID, and I can probably just recreate the scheduled copies.
Now to hook the server up at the client site and make sure email, file shares, and everything else works as it should, but it looks like the built-in restore capabilities worked!
Not exactly local, but this is the next conference I want to attend!
Imagine Thanksgiving weekend, with all the food, Christmas lights going up, all the food, but wait, it’s SUMMER!
Well, not here in KC, but if you attend the SMB Focus conference that Wayne Small of SBSFAQ.com fame is putting on, you’ll be in Australia as they head towards the summer season!
The conference, like many others, focuses on both business and technical training for SMB VARs, but with a twist: “lifestyle training” is what Wayne calls it. So if you’re working 50-60 hours a week, are highly stressed, and on the edge of burnout (or your family is ready to burn you out!), this is the conference for you. Besides, how better can you prove you’re balancing life and work than by attending a conference Down Under?
There’s an early bird discount available through the end of July, but if you pre-register, you can save even more on the price of admission. Sorry, no discount on airfare!
