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Archive for Servers – Page 4

Fix for Windows Server Essentials 2012R2 and Multi-DC released

by KW · Comments (0)
Aug 12 2014

Microsoft released an update (KB 2974308) today to address the issue where integrating Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2 with Microsoft Office 365 or Windows Azure Active Directory is blocked when you are in a multiple domain controller environment.

Until now, you could only integrate Windows Server Essentials with O365/Azure AD in a single domain controller environment.

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Attempting to run the integration in a multiple DC environment would fail:

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I’m proud of the work that our MVP group did in identifying this issue soon after the release of Essentials 2012 R2 last year.

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Categories : Essentials, Microsoft, MVP, News, Office 365, Servers, SMB
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Netgear Backup Appliance using StorageCraft ShadowProtect

by KW · Comments (0)
Jul 14 2014

imageStorageCraft and Netgear are teaming up to release a new set of products called ReadyRECOVER Backup Appliance. It’s designed for small and medium-sized businesses, and leverages the legendary reliability of StorageCraft ShadowProtect to simplify backup and recovery of Windows systems.

With ReadyRECOVER, incremental snapshots, taken as often as every 15 minutes, generate full backups instantly.  Each point in time backup is ready to quickly and reliably recover Windows systems, including Microsoft SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint servers, into production mode on any platform – physical or virtual.  Each backup is also ready for fast, simple recovery of files or folders.

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Categories : Backup, News, Servers, Tools, Windows
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Server NIC icon shows yellow triangle with exclamation

by KW · Comments (1)
Jun 26 2014

Customer has a Windows Server 2012 system, and calls me to say that the NIC icon in the taskbar has a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark. This would normally indicate that there is no network/Internet connection.

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And, when I opened up Network and Sharing Center, it reports that there is no Internet connection.

But, Internet is working just fine. So, what gives?

This situation will often occur when you have a server with multiple NIC adapters, but only one of them is active, and the others are disabled. And this was exactly the case with this custoer.

The solution is two-fold:

  1. You need to change the binding order to put the active NIC first
  2. And then you need to restart Network Location Awareness and change its default startup condition.

Step 1: Change binding order of NICs

  • Unfortunately, finding out where to change the binding order is not always intuitive. These steps were for the 2012 Server I was working on
  • Locate the network icon in your right taskbar, right click on the icon, and select ‘Open Network and Sharing Center’
  • In the new window that displays, along the left side, click ‘Change adapter settings’
  • A window displays listing your network adapters. Here comes the “tricky part”.
  • Press the ALT key, and a new command menu bar will appear, like this:
    image
  • Click on Advanced, then click Advanced Settings
  • If the active NIC is not listed first, then click to highlight it, and use the arrow keys to the right to move it up.
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  • For more information on changing the network protocol bindings, view this Microsoft article

Step 2: Reset Network Location Awareness service

  • Open up Services control panel (Run –> services.msc)
  • Find the Network Location Awareness service, click to select it, and then select Restart
  • After the service has been restarted, right click on the service, and click Properties.and select to restart it.
  • Go to Startup Type, and change it to ‘Automatic (Delayed Start)’
    clip_image001[4]
  • Click OK and then close the Services windows
Comments (1)
Categories : Network, SBS, Servers, Windows
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.Net Updates will break client backups

by KW · Comments (0)
May 13 2014

Microsoft released today (May 13, 2014) a security update for the .Net Framework (KB2960358).

However, after applying this update, client backups on SBS 2011 Essentials, WHS 2011, Server Storage Essentials 2008, and 2012 Essentials will fail.

Microsoft has already released updates to fix this problem:

  • KB2934957 for Windows 2012 Essentials
  • KB2934950 for Windows 2011 Essentials, WHS 2011, WSSE 2008*
    * Please note, before applying this fix, there is a pre-requisite that the server has the appropriate Rollup 4 update applied.
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Categories : SBS, Servers, WHS, Windows
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Microsoft includes XP in fix for recent IE security issue

by KW · Comments (0)
May 01 2014

Microsoft has released today (May 1, 2014) a security update (MS14-021 / 2965111) that addresses the recent Internet Explorer (IE) issue that was first discussed in Security Advisory 2963983. More importantly, Microsoft has decided to make this patch available for Windows XP users, although XP is officially no longer a supported operating system.

If your computers are set to receive automatic Windows updates from Microsoft, then this patch will be automatically installed.

Read more here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2014/05/01/out-of-band-release-to-address-microsoft-security-advisory-2963983.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-may 

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-021

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Categories : Malware, News, Security, Servers, Windows
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Exchange 2010 Queue Viewer Error

by KW · Comments (0)
Apr 21 2014

Customer is running Exchange 2010 SP3 on a Windows 2012 Server. Email is running fine. But whenever I open up Queue Viewer and try to drill down to a message detail, I get the following popup error message:

Cannot process argument transformation on parameter ‘BookmarkObject’. Cannot convert the “Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.PropertyBagBasedMessageInfo” value of type “Deserialized.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.PrpopertyBagBasedMessageInfo” to type “Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.ExtensibleMessageInfo”.

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It appears that others have been encountering this same error for over a year (see this thread from Microsoft forum). The very last post in this thread offers a “resolution” to the issue, if you wish to call  it a resolution.

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In KB2931150, Microsoft says that this error is a known bug, and instead of using the Queue Viewer utility from EMC, you should use the Exchange power shell “Get-Queue” command.

So let’s open up the EMC Power Shell and try a couple of commands!

To get a list of queued messages, type get-queue and press enter.

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To get details on a particular message, first take note of a specific message identity you wish to view. Then type get-queue –identity exchangeserver\messageid | fl and press enter

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For a full list of options with the Get-Queue command, type get-help get-queue and press enter

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Open up the EMC Shell, and type “get-queue” and press Enter. A list of queued messages will display

te

Comments (0)
Categories : Exchange, Servers, Tools, Windows
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WHS 2011 and UEFI GPT Partitions

by KW · Comments (0)
Apr 03 2014

Yes, this info is a year old, but I’m just getting around to having customers by Windows 8.1 computers Smile

One of my customers is using a Windows Home Server (WHS) 2011 system to backup his office computers. He just obtained a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop. I install the WHS connector, and attempt to backup the laptop, and it died sitting at 1%. I rebooted both the laptop and the server, with the same result. Both systems are current on patches.

Then I discover that there is a Microsoft hotfix for the WHS server that is required to properly backup computers with UEFI/GPT disk partitions.

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There are plenty of web sites posting this information, but none fully address the process, which I will do. What the KB article does NOT tell you is that after installing the hotfix, the workstation will need to apply an update to the Launchpad before the backup will function properly.

Part 1 – from the WHS Server

  1. Login to the WHS system, and go to the Microsoft KB2781272 link and click on the button “Hotfix Download Available –>”
  2. You will be offered three versions of the hotfix. the first version listed is the most recent one.
  3. Select it, and fill in your email address. Microsoft will send you an email with a link to download the file
  4. Look for the email, download the file and move it over to a temp directory on the WHS server. I created a temp folder labeled “UEFI-Hotfix” under the Downloads folder.
  5. Double click on the file, which is a self-executing zip file, and it will expand out the contents to your temp directory. If you are not able to do so, right click on the file and look to see if the file has been “blocked”. If so click on the Block button.
  6. You will be prompted to select a folder to unzip the file. Use the “Browse” button and go to the temp folder you created.
  7. Locate the actual hotfix file (labeled Windows6.1-KB2781272-x64.msu, double click and install it.
  8. You will be prompted to reboot the server

Part 2 – from the Windows 8.1 computer

  1. From the computer in question, startup the WHS Launchpad. Note: you don’t need to sign in, just start it up.
  2. You should then see a task activity button indicating that an update to the LaunchPad is being installed.
  3. Once that is finished, you should be able to successfully create a backup.
Comments (0)
Categories : Backup, Servers, Tools, WHS
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Windows 2012 No Remote Desktop License Servers Available

by KW · Comments (0)
Mar 26 2014

Customer site is running Windows Server 2012 Essentials and a Windows 2012 Terminal Server. User contacts me to report that she was unable to connect into the Terminal Server from Remote Web Access (RWA). I tried, and got the same error message when I tried to access the Terminal Server:

The remote session was disconnected because there are no Remote Desktop License Servers available to provide a license. Please contact the server administrator

I knew it was not an RWA issue because I could RWA into the 2012 Essentials server. A quick search and I found a post that indicates that there is a bug with 2012 RDS session hosts where they will not look to the licensing server for CALs when the grace period ends. Although I would like a permanent fix, the following solution resolved the crisis at hand.

The solution is to delete a specific registry key relating to the grace period, and then reboot the server.

  1. Open up the registry editor on the Terminal Server
  2. Browse down to: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\RCM
  3. Make a backup copy of the GracePeriod registry key
  4. Then you can Delete the GracePeriod registry key
    image
  5. Note: if you are not able to delete the key, you need to give yourself permission:
    Right click on the GracePeriod key and assign ‘full control’ permission to the administrator account.
    You should then be able to delete the key.
    image
  6. Reboot the server and check it out.
Comments (0)
Categories : Servers, Terminal Server, Windows
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SVCHOST.exe spiking CPU

by KW · Comments (0)
Mar 05 2014

I see this from time to time, on both workstations and servers. Your system seems to be extremely sluggish or unresponsive. So you open up task manager and you see that a svchost.exe process using 50% or more of CPU. To complicate the matter, there are more than one svchost.exe processes running.

What is one to do???

In many cases, a recent Windows update may be the cause. But it’s hard to track down which update might be the culprit.

Meanwhile, here is what I will often do to at least quickly address and resolve the issue:

  1. Identify the PID of the spiking svchost
  2. Identify a list of services associated with that svchost occurrence
  3. Stop each service until you find the offender

Here’s the blow-by-blow:

Identify PID of svchost.exe that is spiking

  • Open up Task Manager
  • Click on View –> Select Columns… –> then click to check PID (Process identified)
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  • Click on the Image Name column to sort by name
  • Scroll down and find the PID number associated with the spiking svchost.exe service. In my case, it was PID 844.
    image

Identify list of services associated with that svchost.exe process

  • Leave Task Manager window open
  • Open up a command prompt window, and type TASKLIST /SVC and press enter
  • This will give you a list of specific services associated with each svchost.exe
  • Locate your PID and note all the actual services running under that instance.
    image

Identify specific service causing the spike

  • Open up Services console (Start –> Run –> services.msc)
  • Position the Services and Task Manager windows side by side
  • Now, one by one, from the Services window, locate each service listed for the associated PID, and stop or pause the service.
  • Then see if from the Task Manager window, if the svchost.exe suddenly drops back to normal. If so, you found your problem service!
  • In my case, I often find that Automatic Updates (wuauserv) Windows Management Instrumentation (winmgmt) to be the culprit. In this particular case, it was wuauserv causing the spike
    image

 

* These screenshots were taken from a Windows 2003 server, but the process is that same for other Windows platform. The only big difference is that the Task Manager window has a new format with Windows 8/2012, and they display the PID# automatically, saving you one step!

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Categories : SBS, Servers, Tools, Windows
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Upcoming Rate Change to Microsoft’s Action Pack Subscription

by KW · Comments (0)
Feb 13 2014

For small I.T. owners and developers who are Microsoft Partners, the Microsoft Action Pack subscription has been a huge blessing financially. For one low annual cost, Microsoft provides us access to almost all iof their current product offerings, from Windows 8 to Windows Server 2012, from Office 2013 to Visual Studio.

Microsoft recently announced changes to the Action Pack subscription model, effective February 24, 2014.

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The change that many will focus on is the price increase, going from $329US to $475US, which is a 30% increase. I agree that that’s a big hike. But before you decide to just walk away from this, here are my thoughts:

  1. The $475 fee is still an inexpensive and easy way to have access to Microsoft’s full line of products – all for the comparable cost of a single Windows Server license. That’s less than $40 a month!
  2. If you are new to the Action Pack program, you may not be aware, but this is only the second price adjustment that Microsoft has made since I first signed up for an Action Pack subscription 12 years ago. The Action Pack subscription fee remained flat at $299 for the years 2003-2010. For years 2011-2013, the price went up to $329.

If you sign up or renew your subscription before February 24th, you can do so at the current $329, thus giving you savings for your first year.

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Categories : Microsoft, SBS, Servers, Tools, Windows
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