Kez's questions

At what point should you migrate public folders from Exchange 2007/2010 to Office 365 to minimize downtime during a cutover migration? I understand from the guide here that you should migrate mailboxes first but it's not exactly clear.

When I migrate mailboxes over, finalize the migration batch and change the necessary autodiscover records, will Outlook reconfigure itself and continue to display the legacy on-premises public folders?

Just worried that once I have migrated mailboxes, Outlook will stop display the public folders altogether. Would prefer not to end up on the spot in a rush to migrate the public folders when they suddenly vanish unexpectedly.

Obviously not Googling the right questions here, so any help would be appreciated.

We are using Hyper-V in a clustered Server 2008 R2 environment with 3 identical hosts. Virtual machines are stored on cluster shared volumes (CSV's) on a SAN backend connected via iSCSI.

What is the quickest, safest and most efficient way of moving virtual machines from one CSV to another? Individual CSV's contain the VHD and the Virtual Machines sub-folder which contains XML, BIN and VSV files.

Virtual machines do not have any snapshots associated with them.

We have a cluster of 3 x 2008 R2 physical hosts running Hyper-V.

How do I safely move the VHD(s) and accompanying XML files, etc, for a specific VM to a new location? I want to keep the VM with the same name in the same cluster - just relocate the actual data files.

Note - we do not have SCVMM.

Our internal Windows domain is ad.company.co.uk.

When we try to access mail.company.co.uk (for OWA or Outlook Anywhere, as an example), it resolves to the external IP address of the router and gets stuck due to the router's inability to have reflexive NAT'ing configured.

I read that split-DNS is the best way forward to allow access to internal resources via the external IP address.

Is it safe to add another zone to the internal DNS server called company.co.uk and set up duplicate mail, www, autodiscover, etc. A records, without it interfering with the existing sub-domain already being used for the internal Windows domain? Not keen on trying it in a production environment without being aware of any potential adverse effects, if there are any of course.

Hopefully that makes some sense.

I have done a lot of research but failed to find a reliable answer to our problem.

The short story is our entire Windows domain is running 35 minutes slow. I.e. servers and workstations. I think this is due to the operations master role being assigned to a Hyper-V VM. We have since moved the role over to a physical server. Unfortunately, I have inherited this from the wonderful ex-support company.

My plan (just an idea!):

1. Change "Maximum tolerance for computer clock synchronization" from 5 minutes to 60 minutes for the Default Domain GPO and wait a couple of hours for it to push out to the workstations? It replicates every 90 minutes by default, right?

2. Set an external time source on the DC with the operations master role. This should then update other servers and workstations in turn.

To ensure I am asking a straightforward question here, what is the safest and most efficient way to correct the time drift within the entire network? Obviously, immediately changing the time on the DC will cause major issues with kerberos authentication.

I have taken over a problem regarding Exchange 2007 following the restore of a server from a backup 2 years old. Nobody can log into Outlook and I can see a ton of errors in the event logs, event ID 1022 on the Exchange server itself.

Any ideas how to fix this? Google doesn't bring up anything useful apart from checking that the accounts are not disabled or locked - which they aren't.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store
Date:          20/12/2011 15:00:26
Event ID:      1022
Task Category: Logons
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      exchserver.domain
Description:
Logon Failure on database "First Storage Group\Mailbox Database" - Windows account domain\user1; mailbox /o=blahblahblah/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIFDSGDDDFT)/cn=Recipients/cn=user1.
Error: 1010 
Client Machine: computer1.domain 
Client Process: OUTLOOK.EXE 
Client ProcessId: 0 
Client ApplicationId: N/A

Our Exchange 2003 server had a catastrophic failure which corrupted the contents of the Exchange databases. Soft recovery failed due to excessive corruption. At 72GB, a hard recovery was not really an option due to disk space and the time it would have taken to do the eseutil /p and eseutil /d. There were a ton of log files missing too so data loss would probably have been quite high. We got the client up and running with a blank mailbox store, restored the most recent backup using NTBackup into a Recovery Storage Group and recovered individual mailboxes into the production database. This worked just fine.

How do I restore Public Folders from the NTBackup backup into a production environment, without affecting the Mailbox Store in anyway, which is working just fine now.

Is it as simple as setting their current production public folder store (empty) to be overwritable and selecting the public folder from the backup selection list in NTBackup? As they are up and running with their mailbox store, I wouldn't want to do anything that might break it again.

When using the Local Move Request within Exchange 2010 to move a mailbox from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, can the user still access their mailbox on either server?

If not, does temporarily suspending the move request allow access and via which Exchange server?

Is there a way of disabling Outlook signatures for all users/computers via group policy and administrative templates?

We are implementing a third-party centrally managed signature solution and want to turn off all signatures created within Outlook without having to visit each and every workstation on the domain.

We are running Windows Server 2003 with a mix of Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Is there any way of creating a public folder calendar using the Exchange Management Shell?

Outlook is not installed on the Exchange Server nor do I want to install it. Access is very limited to client computers so I would rather create it from the server itself. Surely it can't be that difficult to do?

I have tried using the PFDAVAdmin tool but it fails to connect despite numerous attempts and I have given up on it for now.

We are getting this error on one user's computer, running Windows 7 and Outlook 2007 in a domain environment. Exchange Server is 2007.

It only happens occasionally for random email addresses, internally and externally. Sometimes sending images and sometimes not it seems.

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

I have done my reading around and seen problems related to sending vCards and BES. We are not sending vCards or digitally signing emails, or sending from Blackberry handsets in this case.

An example NDR is below:

_____________________________________________
From: Microsoft Exchange 
Sent: 17 August 2010 09:18
To: Mr Sender
Subject: Undeliverable: RE: booking
Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

Mr Recipient <mailto:[email protected]> 
The e-mail system had a problem processing this message. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.
 _____  
Sent by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 

Diagnostic information for administrators:

Generating server: exchsvr.domain.local

[email protected]
#550 5.6.0 M2MCVT.StorageError; storage error in content conversion ##

Original message headers:

Received: from exchsvr.domain.local ([192.168.0.1]) by exchsvr.domain.local
 ([192.168.0.1]) with mapi; Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:17:39 +0100
Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name="winmail.dat"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
From: Mr Sender <[email protected]>
To: Mr Recipient <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:17:38 +0100
Subject: RE: booking
Thread-Topic: booking
Thread-Index: Acs7kjK27G45MtsWStyjlgX8C2bAsAABCO8YAJNQgYAAAD3wYA==
Message-ID: <18BA3EFCD95BA44AA359B7358A909BE211035339B4@synexch01.domain.local>
References: <F1A0F7931758C047869ACB087522B76590A8931D7D@s-dor001-mx01.blah.net>
 <F1A0F7931758C047869ACB087522B76590A8F60B68@s-dor001-mx01.blah.net>
In-Reply-To: <F1A0F7931758C047869ACB087522B76590A8F60B68@s-dor001-mx01.blah.net>
Accept-Language: en-US, en-GB
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach: yes
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0

BES only syncs the last 30 days worth of calendar appointments.

I need to change this to sync more than 30 days, e.g. 6 months for example.

I read a workaround which involves disabling the wireless sync, syncing with the Blackberry Desktop software and then re-enabling the wireless sync. This would not work, as the 30 day setting would still apply to calendar appointments going forwards.

How can I set BES up to sync more than 30 days worth of calendar appointments?

I receive the following sync error in Outlook 2007 SP2:

Your server administrator has limited the number of items you can open simultaneously. Try closing messages you have opened or removing attachments and images from unsent messages you are composing.

It is stopping me updating another user's calendar, which is open within my Outlook. Change are simply not syncing, either way.

Is there a fix for this, e.g. increasing the number of permitted connections on the Exchange Server? We are using Exchange Server 2007 on a domain.

We are restoring just the public folders database using Backup Exec 9.1.

The main EDB and STM files restored okay. However, the byte count has stalled and now there are tons of .IFS files in the database folder. 40-60 to be precise.

They appear to be rotating every few minutes, with incrementing names such as:

14D-871CFBD0-1541491D.IFS

I am worried about doing anything, as this has taken over 7 hours to restore 70GB worth of public folders - plus another 4 hours doing this. Should I cancel the restore, should I try mounting the database manually, do nothing?

Note - although the database was mounted okay before we had the server crash (due to a failed disk) I am concerned that maybe the size of the database has fallen over the 75GB limit, which might be causing this?

• pub1.edb = 53.6GB
• pub1.stm = 24.79GB

Any suggestions on next steps?

EDIT - Restore has now been running for over 23 hours. Further note, there are 5 transaction log files in the temp folder, with restore.env at 1KB.

Our box running Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 was recently replaced with a box running Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2007. Data was migrated across from the old server before it was retired.

We now need to restore a folder from Public Folders from 9 months ago, from a tape backup using Symantec BackupExec.

How do I restore a public folder from a backup of Exchange 2003 into Exchange 2007? Is this even technically possible?

We have a Windows Server 2003 environment with XP Professional laptops.

If I switch a user from a roaming profile to a local profile in active directory, by clearing the profile path, will this cause any problems on the laptop the user always uses? (They only use one single laptop - the roaming profile setting was set by their previous IT company.)

I.e. would it cause a new profile on the laptop to be created when they log on next or anything silly like that?

I see lots of information changing from local to roaming but not from roaming to local.

How do I maintain a single up to date backup of our Exchange 2003 server onto a remote computer, connected over the internet?

We still take nightly backups onto tape but we want something completely automated. Set it and forget it. Our tape backups are also becoming increasingly unreliable due to the age of the tape drive and we are not in the best financial situation to replace it. Free or cheap software is a necessity, unfortunately!

We use a standard ADSL connection, so backing up the 30GB worth of database files over the internet each night is obviously not an option, nor is it likely to be an option to do it each week either. One single database file is 19GB on its own.

There must be a way of taking incremental backups, pushing these changes over the internet to a remote computer using a VPN connection which then merges the changes into a single backup file.

How would I do this?

We are using Windows Server 2008 and the built in RemoteApp feature for Terminal Services.

When we run a RemoteApp (WordPad for example), local printers are automatically redirected as expected. However, the default printer within the RemoteApp session is changed to the default printer on the local computer(!)

I have tried creating a script and assigning it within Terminal Server Configuration page to run when users logon, but this is not run when a RemoteApp is opened. It is only run when I mstsc directly to the server.

How can I set which printer is the default for the RemoteApp, even after automatic printer redirection has taken place?

We are using Exchange 2007 on a Windows Server 2008 machine.

We have to log into OWA and delete the Out of Office reply there in order to be able to change it in Outlook. If we do not do this and try to change it in Outlook (2003), it simply reverts back to the old reply. I have never seen this before and have been unable to find any information on it anywhere.

This problem is affecting two different users, has only started happening recently and there have been no Microsoft Updates installed on the server since December's patch Tuesday.

Any ideas?

Our Dell PowerEdge 2950 server has 4 SAS disks in a RAID 5 array on a Dell PERC 6/i SCSI card. We are running Windows 2003 SBS R2 - 32 bit. SP2.

The device, \Device\Harddisk0, has a bad block.

The above error is logged numerous time in the event logs over a period of months, many times each day.

The Dell diagnostics all come back clean showing no errors of any kind. Dell technical support have checked while remotely connected to the server and also failed to see anything caused by the hardware.

CHKDSK comes back with nothing.

We are hitting our head against a brick wall in what to check next. Although we have seen no crashes or other symptoms, we are obviously concerned and want to prevent any problems before they have chance to surface.

Any input, suggestions or experiences of the same kind of thing would be really appreciated in trying to get this fixed.