Tim Long's questions

I'm setting up some brand new Dell laptops that have come with Windows 10 Pro preinstalled. I need to connect them to a server that is running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials.

From what I can make out online, Windows 10 has been supported since about November 2015 and I should just proceed as normal, by pointing the client's browser to http://server-address/connect

The connector wizard loads and asks me for my username and password, then after a bit of a delay says

An unexpected error has occurred

Right, very helpful, thanks Microsoft ;-)

I've spent maybe a couple of hours googling and found a lot of out-of-date stuff about manually installing the connector; I think that advice is obsolete now.

What's the knack to getting this to work?

I received a support ticket today from my hosting provider (they created it), saying that my SQL transaction log had filled up and that they had truncated it, shrunk it and reset it to Full recovery model.

I'm confused as to why they let the transaction logs fill up to the point where a web site falls over and needs manual intervention. I asked them if they were backing up the databases and they replied (in slightly broken English)

We back up every day and keep the backups for a week. The transaction log has to be kept because we don't know what transaction you make and it might contain important information. The backup itself has the log truncated.

Confused by the last sentence. It seems to imply that they are not backing up the logs, which I guess is OK if they are running a full backup every day, but then if that is the case, why aren't the transaction logs getting truncated every day?

I tried to politely suggest that they probably should be truncating the logs, but I'm not sure they properly understand how the logs work. I can hold my own with SQL Server but I'm not an expert and I'm not sure enough of myself to call them on it. Also I don't know what backup software they are using or how it is configured.

So, are they justified in never truncating the logs? Is there any scenario where that helps? They seem to have a system whereby they get an alert when the log is full and they go in and manually run a truncate script. It works but it is inelegant, and means my web site falls over every few weeks until they notice the problem and fix it, at which point they delete the log which they told me earlier I needed to keep. Arghghghgh!

What would you do, oh SQL Server expert?

I have a Hyper-V server that I think the networking components are misconfigured. Even when I've set a static IP address, the server sends a constant stream of DHCP Discover broadcasts (the physical address in the broadcasts matches the Hyper-V host NIC). The DHCP server is responding with Offer responses, but the Hyper-V server just ignores it and sends another request.

This Hyper-V host has 3 NICs, one of which is dedicated to management of the host, the other provides an external network for several VMs. The third (integrated on the motherboard) is not used. There is also a Hamachi VPN adapter although that is not a virtual NIC. Here's wht it looks like:

GTi LAN NIC is the one that matches the physical address in the offending DHCP packets. However, DHCP is disabled on that NIC, as you can see here:

So I'm at a bit of a loss as to where these DHCP requests are coming from and why. Any ideas?

I run a small PBX based on the FreePBX distro of Asterisk. The installation has been steadily upgraded but for various reasons, we want to start again on a new server with a clean install from the distribution media.

Will I be able to take a backup from the old server and restore it to the new server, even though the installs are different versions? How sensitive are FreePBX backups to the build version? Is it possible to get at least a partial restore?

I've painted myself into a corner. I've just installed Service Pack 1 on a Windows 2008 R2 server that is hosted in a remote datacentre with no possibility of logging in with a 'real' screen and keyboard. SP1 seems to have broken Remote Desktop protocol (RDP), I get to the log-in screen, log in and briefly see the Welcome message, then the RDP session is terminated like so:

The service provider (OVH) has a virtual KVM thingy that is supposed to help out in this situation, but the server blue-screens when booting into that mode (it is some sort of virtual environment apparently). OVH engineers say that vKVM isn't supported for 2008 servers, so that tool is useless... almost. The one ray of hope is that I am able to boot the server into safe mode using vKVM and it doesn't blue-screen, but:

• I can't uninstall the service pack because the server manager doesn't run in safe mode
• I can't install VNC because Windows Installer doesn't run in safe mode
• I can't install updates because Windows Update doesn't run in safe mode (anecdotal evidence suggests that installing further updates would have solved this issue).

There isn't a full system backup of this server because the backup system is based on FTP and it just wasn't feasible, so I can't simply restore from backup. All of the important data is backed up, however. So I have the option to rebuild the server from scratch, I'd really hope to avoid that though as the down time is undesirable.

Any suggestions on how I can paint myself back out of this corner without a full reinstall? e.g. is there some remote access software that can be installed in safe mode? Is there a known fix for RDP? Is there a way to roll back a service pack from safe mode?

Our Asterisk-based PBX (FreePBX "Tango" distro) does not require any prefix for outgoing calls. The system is able to recognise external numbers and route them appropriately.

Some of our users who are accustomed to older PBXes habitually dial a 9 'for an outside line'. This doesn't work, the system gives them an unintelligible error message and they raise a support ticket saying 'The phones are not working'.

What I would like to happen is that the users receive a recorded announcement, informing them that they need to 'hang up and redial without the prefix'. I can record the announcement, set it up as an announcement on the system, but then I run up against a brick wall. Outbound routes only let me route to trunks. How can I route misdialled numbers to my custom announcement?

Assumptions:

• The solution must be completely realized within the FreePBX GUI, we don;t allow direct modification of any config files.
• A 'misdialled number' is defined as matching the dial pattern: 9[046-9]XXX.
• The call should be routed to the selected announcement, then hang up.

Any help would be appreciated.

I need to set up a standby server using SQL Server Log Shipping. This is my first time doing this, so I'm following the instructions in the SQL Help step by step. Of course, I ran into a problem at the first step. The help file says:

1. Right click the database you want to use as your primary database in the log shipping configuration, and then click Properties.
2. Under Select a page, click Transaction Log Shipping.

I do not see a menu entry for Transaction Log Shipping. Here's what I see:

So why am I not being offered this option?

I wasn't sure if this was the best place for this question, but I think it is squarely in the realm of the IT admin so that's the reason I put it here.

We need to share large files (several Gigabytes) with external clients. We need a simple way of reliably and automatically publishing these files so that clients can then download them. Our organization has Windows desktops and a Windows SBS 2011 server.

Sharing from our server is probably suboptimal from the client's perspective, because of the low upstream bandwidth of typical ADSL (around 1 Mbps) - it would take all day (9 hours for a 4Gb file) for the client to download the file.

Uploading to a 3rd party sever is good for the client but painful for us, because we then have to deal with a multi-hour upload.

Uploading to a third-part server would be less problematic if it could be made reliable and automatic, e.g. something like a Groove/SharePoint Workspace, simply drop the file in and wait for it to synchronize - but Groove has a 2Gb limit which is not big enough.

So ideally I'd like a service with the following attributes:

• Must work for files of at least 5Gb, preferably 10Gb
• Once the transfer is started, it must be reliable (i.e. not sensitive to disconnections and service outages) and completely automatic
• Ideally, the sender would get a notification when the transfer completes.
• Has to work with Windows based systems.

Any suggestions?

I'm trying to commit some files to a Subversion repository hosted in VisualSVN server, it's started giving me an error message I haven't seen before:

Error: Commit failed (details follow):  
Error: Server sent unexpected return value (405 Method Not Allowed) in response to  
Error:  MKCOL request for  
Error:  '/svn/XXX/!svn/txr/1005-tj/XXX.co.uk/trunk/www/1/App_Data/files/2011/9'  

I've recently updated my server to 2.5.2, which incorporates Subversion 1.72. Could this be a breakage in the new version or is someone familiar with what's wrong here?

I have a linux server running Centos (actually its a PBX running Trixbox) that I want to migrate to a Hyper-V based VM so that the physical server can be repurposed.

Is it possible to capture a VHD image directly from a Linux server?

I just had an odd thing happen with a Hyper-V server that has 4 guest VMS running on it. The host server and all guests are Server 2008 R2 SP1.

I logged into one of the guest VMs using Remote Desktop and rebooted a web application running on it, then logged out. I tried to access that service remotely and it was unresponsive. I tried other services and they were unresponsive too. I logged into the host server and opened the Hyper-V console, and all of the VMs were paused. WTF? I manually resumed them and off they went.

I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything to make those VMs pause. One I may hove done accidentally somehow, but a bunch of 4, definitely not! So how could this have happened? What would make VMs pause themselves?

I use IIS 7.5 with the Application Request Routing and URL Rewriting modules to act as a reverse proxy for several apache-based web sites, including VisualSVN Server. I'm having a problem when I try to commit a Web.config file, TortoiseSVN gives me the following error:

Sending content: C:\Users\Tim Long\Desktop[obfuscated]\www\1\admin\Comments\Web.config Error: Commit failed (details follow): Error: '/svn/TiGra/!svn/wrk/852c5a84-a682-2847-8b29-6d5b353ff786/trunk/Webs/[obfuscated]/www/1/admin/Comments/Web.config' Error: path not found Finished!:

In the IIS logs, I see a 404 not found:

2011-08-05 17:47:05 192.168.162.52 PUT /svn/TiGra/!svn/wrk/852c5a84-a682-2847-8b29-6d5b353ff786/trunk/Webs/[obfuscated]/www/1/admin/Comments/Web.config - 80 - 192.168.162.35 SVN/1.6.17+(r1128011)/TortoiseSVN-1.6.16.21511+neon/0.29.6 404 8 0 0

I suspect this is because IIS is configured to disallow *.config files from being served. I've edited the request filtering rules for the site and explicitly allowed .config files, I've also added a MIME type of text/plain, but no joy.

Can anyone suggest what I need to do to get IIS to correctly allow Web.config files to pass transparently through to the back-end VisualSVN server?

I have an IIS7 server that acts as a reverse proxy for several other web servers. The other servers run on different ports, so the IIS7 server provides 'friendly URLs' and all on port 80. URL rewriting is used to hand the request off to the back-end server.

One such server is TeamCity (continuous integration and build server). This server provides a way to download the results of a build ('build artifacts'). Typically these artifacts are a zip archive. Here's an example URL:

http://build.teamserver.tigranetworks.co.uk/repository/download/bt25/4164:id/ASCOM+Telescope+Driver+for+AWR+6.0.40.825.zip

The + characters in ASCOM+Telescope+Driver+for+AWR+6.0.40.825.zip are actually spaces in the final filename; the TeamCity server puts in the + characters.

When this link is clicked, I receive the following error from the IIS7 server:

404 - File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

The actual URL appearing in the IIS7 logfile is:

/repository/download/bt25/4164:id/ASCOM+Telescope+Driver+for+AWR+6.0.40.825.zip

The rewrite rule matches the pattern (.*) and rewrites the URL using

http://localhost:8022/{R:1}

Now here is the interesting thing. If I go back to my browser and edit out those + characters, carefully replacing them with spaces, then the URL works!

I conclude that the URL rewriting is somehow not working for those + characters. Is this a known issue? Any suggestions?

I work in a small organization that uses a single file & print server with an Active Directory domain for user management.

The office admin who inducts new people is non-technical and generally creates the AD user account because there is no permanent IT support on-site and users need their accounts immediately. However, there is follow-up work that needs to be done after that (creating an extension on the PBX, setting up voicemail, form filling, etc, etc) which needs to be farmed out to various different people.

The manual process we have works for the most part, but has gaps and things sometimes get forgotten. I am not in any position to re-architect these business processes, such as they are, so for the purposes of this question, please can we take it as read that the business process is immutable. My solution needs to mesh with the existing process.

Essentially what I think I need is a way to generate email notifications upon manual creation of a new user in Active Directory - a sort of lightweight workflow engine that just emails people and/or my ticketing system with the follow-up tasks that need doing. Yes, I know it's not best practice, yes I know its not cool, but given my situation, I think that's the most pragmatic solution.

Is there a simple, lightweight way to do this? I'm thinking along the lines of a PowerShell script or something like that (there's no budget for a proper IDM system and, as I mentioned, the business process is immutable).

I work in an office complex that has two seperate ADSL connections, which they use to provide two seperate networks (actually both the ADSL routers go into a Cisco managed switch with two VLANs, one for each ADSL connection).

Circumstances have changed so that 95% of the users are all on one ADSL connection. It would be great if there were a way to join together both connections to emulate a single connection at double the speed, but the ISP doesn't support bonding.

So, is there a sensible way to take two completely seperate ADSL lines and use them to provide a single internet gateway?

In SBS 2008, when first installed or rebooted, DNS queries succeed, but after a period of about 1 day users report that they are unable to access some web sites. On inspection, it may be noticed that the inaccessible web sites are in the .uk and .eu Top Level Domains (TLDs) or certain other TLDs that are outside of the USA.

If left for several days, the problem may appear to resolve itself then re-occur after another day or so.

If the DNS server service is restarted, or the DNS cache on the server is cleared, then the problem is temporarily resolved but re-occurs after a day or so.

I have a TrixBox VoIP server running TrixBox CE 2.6.2.3. Up until recently, I was able to access a Samba share on that box at \astersik\share from my Windows PCs. The share is suddenly no longer working, I get an error message "Windows cannot access \asterisk\share" and the error code is 0x80004005 "unspecified error". Really helpful, Windows, thanks.

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Linux - can anyone help me troubleshoot and check if Samba is configured right on the TrixBox? I've already tried running the setup_samba script, which runs successfully.

UPDATE: I discovered that it is only some newly-upgraded Windows 7 machines that can no longer access the Samba share. My server (2003) can see it OK. Hmmm...

Regarding the SMTP service that is including in Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0.

I have it in my mind that the built-in SMTP service is not capable of routing outbound messages, except to spcific domains that have to be manually specified. However, I've just had a conversation with someone that has challenged my understanding. I've looked at various articles on the web and they are only confusing me more.

So, can anyone categorically state whether or not the IIS SMTP service can be used as a general purpose relay for outbound mail? For example, can I set up a web site that uses it to send outbound mail and the SMTP service will go out and look up the MX records for the recipient and route the email?

I use Windows Server Update Services to manage updates for my SBS 2003 R2 domain. My clients are receiving error code 0x80072EE2 when they try to scan for updates. In typical microsoft style, there's no documentation for the error code. Anyone have any clue what it means? Here's the relevant portion of the WindowsUpdate.log file from one of the failing clients:

2009-05-12  16:11:29:416    1020    1450    Setup   SelfUpdate check completed.  SelfUpdate is NOT required.
2009-05-12  16:12:29:531    1020    1450    PT  +++++++++++  PT: Synchronizing server updates  +++++++++++
2009-05-12  16:12:29:541    1020    1450    PT    + ServiceId = {3DA21691-E39D-4DA6-8A4B-B43877BCB1B7}, Server URL = http://SBS:8530/ClientWebService/client.asmx
2009-05-12  16:12:31:827    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: Cached cookie has expired or new PID is available
2009-05-12  16:12:31:827    1020    1450    PT  Initializing simple targeting cookie, clientId = 0efe255a-cb28-409f-9004-38dcd9790994, target group = , DNS name = copernicus.tigranetworks.local
2009-05-12  16:12:31:827    1020    1450    PT    Server URL = http://SBS:8530/SimpleAuthWebService/SimpleAuth.asmx
2009-05-12  16:13:35:288    1020    1450    Misc    WARNING: SendRequest failed with hr = 80072ee2. Proxy List used:  Bypass List used : > Auth Schemes used : 
2009-05-12  16:13:35:288    1020    1450    PT    + Last proxy send request failed with hr = 0x80072EE2, HTTP status code = 0
2009-05-12  16:13:35:288    1020    1450    PT    + Caller provided proxy = No
2009-05-12  16:13:35:288    1020    1450    PT    + Proxy list used = sbs:8080
2009-05-12  16:13:35:288    1020    1450    PT    + Bypass list used = 
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT    + Caller provided credentials = No
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT    + Impersonate flags = 0
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT    + Possible authorization schemes used = 
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: GetCookie failure, error = 0x80072EE2, soap client error = 5, soap error code = 0, HTTP status code = 200
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: PTError: 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: GetCookie_WithRecovery failed : 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: RefreshCookie failed: 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: RefreshPTState failed: 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: Sync of Updates: 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: SyncServerUpdatesInternal failed: 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent     * WARNING: Failed to synchronize, error = 0x80072EE2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent     * WARNING: Exit code = 0x80072EE2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent   *********
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent   **  END  **  Agent: Finding updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdates]
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent   *************
2009-05-12  16:13:35:289    1020    1450    Agent   WARNING: WU client failed Searching for update with error 0x80072ee2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  >>##  RESUMED  ## AU: Search for updates [CallId = {529605DD-E2A8-469D-9DEB-38E777C6047C}]
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU    # WARNING: Search callback failed, result = 0x80072EE2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU    # WARNING: Failed to find updates with error code 80072EE2
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  #########
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  ##  END  ##  AU: Search for updates [CallId = {529605DD-E2A8-469D-9DEB-38E777C6047C}]
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  #############
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  AU setting next detection timeout to 2009-05-12 19:13:22
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  Setting AU scheduled install time to 2009-05-13 07:00:00
2009-05-12  16:13:35:293    1020    1bd0    AU  Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0
2009-05-12  16:13:35:294    1020    1bd0    AU  Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0
2009-05-12  16:13:40:290    1020    1450    Report  REPORT EVENT: {8FD4EA60-BA78-42B3-9B92-1C7CDD217271}    2009-05-12 16:13:35:289+0100    1   148 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}  0   80072ee2    AutomaticUpdates    Failure Software Synchronization    Windows Update Client failed to detect with error 0x80072ee2.
2009-05-12  16:13:40:348    1020    1450    Report  CWERReporter::HandleEvents - WER report upload completed with status 0x8
2009-05-12  16:13:40:348    1020    1450    Report  WER Report sent: 7.3.7100.0 0x80072ee2 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Scan 101 Managed
2009-05-12  16:13:40:348    1020    1450    Report  CWERReporter finishing event handling. (00000000)
2009-05-12  16:18:26:964    1020    1450    PT  WARNING: Cached cookie has expired or new PID is available
2009-05-12  16:18:26:964    1020    1450    PT  Initializing simple targeting cookie, clientId = 0efe255a-cb28-409f-9004-38dcd9790994, target group = , DNS name = copernicus.tigranetworks.local
2009-05-12  16:18:26:964    1020    1450    PT    Server URL = http://SBS:8530/SimpleAuthWebService/SimpleAuth.asmx
2009-05-12  16:18:27:111    1020    1450    Report  Uploading 2 events using cached cookie, reporting URL = http://SBS:8530/ReportingWebService/ReportingWebService.asmx
2009-05-12  16:18:29:980    1020    1450    Report  Reporter successfully uploaded 2 events.

When I run the SBS Best Practices Analyzer on my SBS 2003 R2, it says I have a 'journal wrap condition'. What does that mean and how can it be repaired?