Exchange Trouble Leads to Learning

Why is it that I always learn best by fire? Why can't I sit down with a tech book and read about issues, problems and tools BEFORE I have a fire to put out? Oh well, I don't. I usually only learn tech tricks by having to put out fires on the job. This was the case last week when our main Exchange server stopped sending mail and started to hold all the messages in the queues.
I had not had to track anything in the queues before this, so looking at and using the Message Tracking Center Tool was new to me. I found some useful information on how to do this at two sites; Computer Performance and Amset.info.
But for quick information on how to get to your queues, what you should see, and some quick troubleshooting tips I recommend these sites to get you started. And by all means, check out you queues, see how messages normally flow so that when you do have a problem you will know how things should work and may just be able to quickly resolve your trouble.

Hard Drive Fun & Vista Service Pack 1

Hard Drive Fun

I read an article today over at TechRepublic about how to build and configure an external hard drive enclosure that was really well done.

Greg Shultz not only goes through how to set one up, but he also explains how to properly set the jumpers on the drive, and what the different settings mean. I enjoyed this article quite a bit, and thought that the information was pesented in a way that was very easy to understand. I will be purchasing one of these for myself.

Vista Service Pack 1

I am installing it right this minute for the first time, so I will post updates here as I go today. Hopefully this SP will fix all my issues with Vista (yeah right, and monkeys may fly out of my butt today).

Ok, here is the update, it took me about an hour to update my PC early in the morning. It went smoothly and I had no download or update problems.

I have not seen any improvements or changes, other than now everytime I remotely connect to my servers at work I get a security message. Nothing seems faster, it still takes MINUTES to open my network connections, and basically all annoyances are still present.

I will be installing spk 1 on my laptop today, that may be a better indicator, as I use it much more often than I do my desktop.

Exchange Note to Self - Contacts

I came across a new thing today in our OU and I wanted to document both what I found and how I changed our settings. I came across a few contacts, where all other listings are Users or Groups.

We had three "contacts" setup in our list of users who have email accounts outside of our mail system. As far as I could tell, they had no account or email with us, but they were members of two internal distribution groups. The only options I have with these contacts is to add to a group, move, delete email addresses, open home page or send mail.

My boss asked me to delete these accounts today and forward the mail to him. I couldn't forward their mail, as it existed off our server, and I couldn't disable the contacts as far as I could tell either, not did I really want to do this. Instead, I simply removed the two group memeberships from these accounts. Which actually achieved his goal, they will no longer get mail from us.

Group Policy Resources

I don't use Group Policy a lot here. I am only one admin in a much larger group, but I do need to know a bit about Group Policy for the MCSE tests. That is why, when I got an email from Windows IT Pro that they were hosting a web seminar on "How To Implement an Effective Change Management Strategy for Group Policy" I signed up.

The web seminar was ok, and I always enjoy hearing and seeing presentations instead of having to read yet another article or book. I think though, that the best thing I got out of the seminar was a link to one of the speakers websites, which I had not heard of before.

Jeremy Moskowitz has written a book or two on Group Policy, and comes recommended by another favorite Microsoft author of mine, Mark Minasi. He has a decent website called GPanswers.com with a newsletter which I just signed up for.

If Group Policy is something that you use and need help with, I recommend Jeremy's site as a good starting place, that is, of course, once you have finished reading all you can on Microsoft's site.

Office Demos

It is almost Christmas, so I have set aside my studying for a few days, but still needed to work on some training for Office 2007 and stumbled upon a site many probably use all the time, but was new to me.

Microsoft has really become more user friendly in the past couple of years, and one sure sign of that is the wealth of information they have on their Office Online sites. In addition to some really great trainging materials, the also have some great demos.

I took some tips and created an article for our newsletter, but I will also be sending my customers more often to the Office site so they too can get the information that they need.

I often find that desktop support takes up a large part of my day if I let it, and I also have found that the more training and guiding I do is less time I have to spend later answering the more basic how-to quetions from my users.

By the way, I also have some users who are still using Office 2003 and one or two stuck on Office 2000 and there are links from them from this site too.

Studying: Command-Line Utilities for Account Management

Today I am studying about the command-line tools used for account management that are tested on the 70-290 certification exam. I need to know what they do, and how their arguments are setup.

dsadd.exe - when used it adds objects to AD (computers, users, quotas, groups, ou)

dsget.exe - when used it shows the properties of objects in AD

dsmod.exe - when used it modifies attributes of objects in AD (computers, users, groups, ou)

dsmove.exe - moves objects in AD

dsquery.exe - allows you to query AD for objects that match specified criteria

gpresult.exe - shows the RSoP for a target user and computer

whoami.exe - displays user and group info for current logged-in user

cmdkey.exe - manages stored username and passwords on the pc

Managing Windows 2003 Server Tips

There are 3 main tools, according to Microsoft, that a System Admin should use to monitor and maintain Windows 2003 Servers.

1. Performance Console- there are two parts to this, the System Monitor that has all the different settings for hardware on your server and the Performance Logs and Alerts that has a standard set of logs and customizable logs and alerts that you can set.

2. Event Viewer - has the different log files on events that the server records. Application, System and Security logs reside on every server. Directory Service and File Replication Service logs will exist on a DC. A DNS Server will contain an additional log file called, appropriately, DNS Server.

3. Task Manager - this handy tool is still the best one for looking at actual process threads. An additional tool that most techs I know use is Process Monitor, as it shows more detail than the built in Task Manager.

Office Assistant & Unzipping Files in Windows XP

Office Assistant Error
I have a user who is getting this error:

There is no office assistant character files present on the system.
Please run setup in maintenance mode and install at least one character.

After a quick search, it seems this is because we often update Office 2000 around here by adding Outlook 2003. When this is done, a second Office Assistant is installed and the two then fight over control.

The instructions on this site suggest an uninstall/reinstall should fix my issue. I have plans to do so tomorrow.

Unzipping Files in Windows XP
I often have new users of Windows XP asking me to install WinZip for them, and while this is a fine product, it is no longer needed.

I found a nice site with pictures that I like to send to users so they can do this on their own, and wanted to document it here. There is no need to reinvent the wheel on this one.