Outlook 2007 – opening additional mailboxes is slow over a WAN link

By default, outlook 2007 will not cache an additional mailbox. Whilst on a quick LAN, this may not pose a problem, but if you are opening additional mailboxes over a slow WAN medium (such as satellite), this may cause outlook to go “Not responding”  or take quite a while to look through the mailboxes folders.

To resolve this issue, you need to do one of the following:

1. Pre Outlook Sp2 – download a hotfix + add a registry hack
2. Post Outlook Sp2 – add a registry hack

For the official word on the registry hack + additional instructions can be found here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955572/

In short, this is what you need to do:

1. Ensure SP2 is installed
2. Locate and then click to select the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Cached Mode (if it doesn’t exist, create it)
3. Right-click CacheOthersMail, and then click Modify.
4. Type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.
5. (if it doesn’t exist, right click on Cached Mode and create a new DWORD – 32bit)
6. Exit Registry Editor.
7. In Outlook, On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
8. Click the Email tab, click to select the Exchange account, and then click Change.
9. Click More Settings.
10. Click the Advanced tab, click to select the Download shared folders (excludes mail folders) check box, and then click OK.
11. Disable headers. To do this, follow these steps:
12. On the File menu, and then click Cached Exchange Mode.
13. Click to clear the following options:
- Download Headers and then Full Items
- Download Headers
- On Slow Connections Download Only Headers
(I couldn’t locate the above, so down on the bottom right hand corner of the screen I disabled “on slow connections download only headers” and I selected download full items)
- Close and re-open outlook

As a sanity check, if you want to confirm that the additional mailbox is being cached.. then go to where the OST is stored and confirm that it is growing in size (may need to close/reopen outlook).

References:

1. http://communified.net/archive/2009/05/08/caching-shared-additional-mailboxes-in-outlook-2007.aspx
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955572/
3. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179067.aspx
4. http://www.edwardsd.co.uk/work/blog/2010/07/08/outlook-2007-cached-mode/

A word of warning… If you enable caching of this additional mailbox, your local OST file will begin to grow.

An error has occured: One of the update processes returned error code 1601

Whilst performing a shadow protect recovery of our domain controller (Win 2k3), SQL server (Win 2k3 64bit) and Exchange 2007 Server (Win2k3 64bit)  to our new Hyper-V 2k8 R2 server I encountered a strange issue.

Basically after you have finished a shadow protect recovery, before booting into the operating system it is recommended that you boot into certain modes for certain server roles (eg: for a domain controller, boot into active directory restore mode, for SQL servers.. safe mode with networking).

When I did this, I was unable to install the Microsoft Integration Services setup as I would get the following error half way through the installation:

An error has occurred: One of the update processes returned error code 1601

This meant that I didn't have mouse functionality or network capabilities.

Now, this puts you into a bit of a quandary as you shouldn't boot certain servers with certain network roles on them without a network adapter installed.

To resolve this issue (make sure you have ran the installation first), I used keyboard shortcuts to get into the Integration Services setup CD and copied the files sitting under the following .cab files to a location on the C:\ drive (only grab either x32 or x64)

Windows6.0-HyperVIntegrationServices-x64.cab
Windows6.0-HyperVIntegrationServices-x32.cab

Once this was done, I went into device manager and manually installed the missing drivers.

Once completed, I was able to access mouse capabilities but I still couldn't get into the network card (even though it was installed). After another reboot (and back into the certain safe mode), I was able to set the IP of
the network card and remove the hidden devices.

Once I was in the operating system (not safe mode), I was able to do a repair install of the Integration Services without any issues (did loose network connectivity for around 20 seconds during the process).

I then went onto recover some Windows 2008 R2 servers and noted that they didn't not have the problem mentioned above.

EBS 2008 Exchange Rebuild Error: Installation wizard failed to connect to the NETLOGON shared folder

A customer was having a issue rebuilding a Exchange server in a EBS 2008 Environment.

When they went to rebuild the exchange server, they would get the following error:

The installation wizard failed to connect to the NETLOGON shared folder on domain controller SERVER.network.local. This is because another user or process is holding open a connection which is causing a credential conflict.

Upon investigation, the following website had the answer: http://serverfault.com/questions/185862/windows-essential-business-server-installation-issue

“open a command prompt and run "NET USE * /d /y" on the server computer. “

This resolved the issue and the client was able to continue building the exchange server. 


Note... It may be possible to avoid the above issue if you dont have any mapped network drives going to any file server/domain controller during this process.

Dell Optiplex 780 - Intermittent Network Disconnection

After deployed a few brand new imaged Optiplex 780's to a site (Using Win7 64bit), I noticed the users were getting intermittent disconnections from their windows 2008 R2 terminal server. I investigated the event logs on the terminal server and investigated the switches. There were no errors out of the ordinary.

Upon investigation of the Optiplex 780 system logs, I noticed the following errors:

Log Name:      System

Source:        e1kexpress

Date:          

Event ID:      35

Task Category: None

Level:         Information

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Computer:     

Description:

Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection

Network link has been established at 10Mbps full duplex.

I checked the Dell website and there was a Urgent NIC driver update which actually had the following fix listed 

"Fixes Intermittent NIC connectivity issues." 

Once the driver update was applied, the issues seemed to go away. 

So moral of the story... Update the NIC and Chipset drivers of your desktops and don't rely on Microsoft's default drivers.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete via Remote Desktop

If you are logged into a remote server and you want to send a "ctrl-alt-delete" to that server, then you can press ctrl-alt-end and this will give you the desired effect.

SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration

So another SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration down and many more yet to come. Have learnt a few extra bits and pieces in order to aid in a successfully SBS migration. It is a bit long winded and can chew up a few extra hours, but in my opinion you need to play SBS migrations safely otherwise you could loose your domain


Required Items:
1) Latest SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration guide
2) A Test server, Desktop and the new SBS 2008 server
3) Latest exchange 2007 service pack
4) Latest Windows/SBS service pack
5) USB drive for migration answer file

Before the Test Migration:
1) Pray to Jesus (I'm serious)
2) Download the latest Microsoft SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration document and memorise it.
3) Make sure the SBS 2003 source server is up to date with Microsoft updates.
4) Fix all AD Journal Wrap errors on the source server.

Test Migration Phase: 
1) Take a backup of the server using the product Shadow Protect  and restore the image to a test server (Follow the HIR instructions on the shadow protect site to the absolute letter).
2) If feasible take a backup of a desktop/laptop and restore it to a test Desktop/Laptop aswell.
3) Uninstall any anti virus clients you have on the source test server (disabling them isn't enough).
4) Perform at least one reboot of the server before commencing.
5) Perform a test migration up to the phase of decommissioning
6) Log into the test laptop/desktop and verify it can access domain resources.
7) Complete the decommissioning phase
8) Create a checklist of things which need to be done during and after the migration based on your experiences from the test migration (this is critical and will help you later on).

During Migration:
1) Pray again
2) If you are planning to change the remote access name of the server, this could affect VPN's and phone syncing. Make sure you let the end users know.
4) Halt mailflow - You want all emails to go through to the new server. If you are paranoid about loosing emails during the migration, then set-up a secondary MX.
3) Take another backup of the server right before migration. Restore the image to your test server again and perform the migration off your test server. This will give you the perfect fall back position if the migration fails. (Make sure your real source server is turned off......)
4) Follow every step of the Microsoft SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 document and tick each section as you go right up to the part you get the green light to move files and migrate exchange mailboxes.
5) Install the latest exchange 2007 and Windows service pack.
6) Run Microsoft updates on the SBS 2008 server.
7) Perform all the steps up to the decommissioning of the source server. I would probably recommend leaving the source server in production for atleast a week. Generally this will give you enough time to make sure every computer has logged into the network and nothing is amiss.

If you were using batch scripts to map network drives, then there are .vbs scripts available which will disconnect old drive mappings and reconnect the new ones (Ive found that sometimes batch scripts dont do a good job of removing old mapped network drives).

Here is a example vbs script I have used:

***************************

On Error Resume Next

Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
Set objNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")

'removes mapped drive G
objNetwork.RemoveNetworkDrive "G:", True, True

'creates maped drive G
objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive "G:", "\\servername\sharename"
**************************


To save some time with printers, it might be a good idea to add a printer remove/add section to the login script. I have yet to do this, but looking forward to finding out.