Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category

How to get Outlook 2007 to save sent e-mail from a shared mailbox in the shared mailbox, and not pay for it!

What company with more than well.. 2 employees do not need a shared mailbox? well almost all the ones I know use some system to share a company general e-mail address and mailbox, this could be info@sole.dk, spamtrap@sole.dk or support@sole.dk and so on.

One of the pains of shared mailboxes has always been to get the Sent e-mail to actually land in the SENT folder of the shared mailbox, and not the users default SENT folder.

It is actually possible to get Outlook 2007 to do this, without having to pay for 3rd party add-ons that may or may not be stable and time consuming.

So since, youre still reading and haven’t jumped to another Google result, You must be wanting to know how, well it’s quite simple, all we have to do is.

  • Ensure we have a specific hotfix on Outlook 2007
  • Set one little registry key

So first up the registry key, we need to add it for current user.

Shared Mailbox Registry Fix (dont forget hotfix)

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How to configure Exchange 2007 and ISA with FBA and NTLM, without loosing ActiveSync on the way

Basicly we are here, because we want to use Forms Based Authentication (FBA) for our Outlook Web Access (OWA) users in Exchange 2007, while still using NTLM/Kerberos authentication for Outlook Anywhere (OA), wich in turn means less entering of the users password, while still not killing our ActiveSync clients since they only run Basic authentication.

Confused? let me try and make it easier.

  • We prefer FBA for OWA, it is just more nice for the user to get a webpage to login to their OWA.
  • We prefer NTLM for OA, it gives less password prompts and well it sounds safer than basic authentication
  • We still want ActiveSync with Basic, but it fails if we use NTLM on our connection as well so we need to seperate them

ISA Rules

What is the solution? Well its rather simple, we configure our services to use the authentication as we prefer, but we need to do some configuring of public DNS, Public IP’s and ISA to get all 3 authentication schemes to work at the same time. Basicly NTLM and Forms Based Authentication just does not mix. If you use FBA on a listener in ISA it will always fallback to Basic authentication if the client does not support FBA. It is not possible to use NTLM and FBA on the same ISA 2006 listener.

I have added screenshots of the important bits of the configuration in the bottom, and You should have all the required info to get it working, but You will need some basic knowledge of how to setup up Exchange 2007, ISA 2006 with Exchange 2007, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Virtualizing Your Domain Controllers without getting fired!

Please pretty please do not just hit the button and P2V/ColdClone/HotClone/Copy your Windows Server Domain Controllers, regardless if they run Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 etc.

In best case You accomplish to virtualize your domain controllers, wich You could have done with a few simple steps just as easily with out any danger.

In worst case You render your Domain Controllers useless, create several other problems and hickups in your infrastructure, not limited to complete production halt and at least several hours of pain and horror trying to get everything back and running!

Personally I have nothing against virtual Domain Controllers, usually best practice is not to run all kinds of other software or services on a Domain Controller, plus the need to have multiple Domain Controllers for redundancy will quickly add alot of boxes doing very little. Virtualizing some or all of these Domain Controllers, will put better use of ressources and still keep the box seperate from other services. Dont forget to change time synchronisation settings in the w32time service, vmware tools and ntp servers in the ESX’s, but thats another story.

One of the big problems with doing a clone of a Domain Controller, is that if you get problems, you will not notice them untill it is too late. The domain controller will seem to function and work with clients, but it will actually have stopped replicating with all other domain controllers, because it has detected that it has been copied. The result is an inconsistent domain with client records not being updated, they will slowly stop working depending on what domain controller they get in contact with, untill everything goes dead. If you have then virtualized ALL domain controllers, You will be left with 1-3 months of changes going down the tube together with your damaged Domain Controllers. Dont forget to take a full backup of at least 1 Domain Controller before starting your cloning!

So what happens when things go bad? Read the rest of this entry »

VBScript to automatically remove a Novell client and save your feet

Novell LogoAdding to my remote Novell migration and removal toolkit, is here below a VBScript that can be used during a migration or as a login script to automatically remove the Novell client from a computer. Of course I dont know if this will work with all versions, but for me this worked to remove Novell in all the editions I encounted, without any tears or use of my feet. The downside of not having to uninstall the Novell client manually from all 2.500 computers, in this migration project is that I seem to be gaining in weight!

It goes without saying, the user used for running the script must have administrative rights, the computer definately wants to be rebooted when done, also I recommend removing any novell printers, shares, iPrint, ZenWorks, etc. before removing the actual Novell Client. And You most definately use this script at your own risk!

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VBScript to automatically & silently remove ZenWorks regardless of version, with no hard manual labor

Novell ZenWorks Configuration ManagementVBScript to automatically remove ZenWorks regardless of version, with no user prompting or hard manual labor

Adding to my collection of VBScript tools for migrating from Novell to Microsoft, here is a little gem to removing ZenWorks, by reading the uninstall information on the computer, we find any version of ZenWorks and the command to uninstall it quietly and without any user prompts.

In a few situations the computer will fail to uninstall ZenWorks, the primary reason for me has been on a computer that is awaiting a reboot from a previous install or uninstall procedure. Simply rebooting the machine and running the script again seems to fix this problem. I have made a script to do that as well, Read the rest of this entry »

VBScript to remove network printers, when RemovePrinterConnection fails and still have time for popcorn and a movie

For the last couple of months, and some months ahead, I am working primarely on migration projects, currently I have just finished developing a lot of scripts to automatically migrate from Novell & ZenWorks to a purely Microsoft environment. So I might share some tips and tricks from my experiences.

Novell LogoTrying to uninstall Novell printers automatically with VBScripting in a login script gave me a headache, for some reason the good old function WshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection would fail every time trying to uninstall a Novell printer. After some searching and testing I found that by executing a command to RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry, I could successfully uninstall the printers. My personal experience shows no warnings or errors to the user, as long as the computer can still access Novell, however I did have some warning messages appear when the computer could not connect, but the printer was still deleted, and the user could not abort it, so in my book thats a success!

Also i found some examples removing the printers with /dn instead of the /dl that I am using Read the rest of this entry »