atomicharri's questions

I’ve got an issue with a terminal server running Win2008R2 Enterprise SP1. My users have remote print mapping enabled (as it is imperative for their day-to-day duties). When they log in, RDP will send a blank document to their default printer. I've seen this problem before but have been unable to resolve the issue thus far.

I've installed all the latest windows updates on the server and user machines range from win7-win8.1 but they all produce the same symptoms.

This happens to users who have PDFprinter as their default and it happens to myself (win8.1) with OneNote2013 as my default. However, when I set my default printer to a physical one, there's no issue.

I've trawled online but have been unable to come up with anything other than installing some KB hotfixes, but these are already installed and have no effect. I can't really update drivers either, as they're using whatever comes with OneNote or PDFPrinter.

I have an ongoing Exchange 2013 problem with some users not being able to add/edit Calendar entries into the Calendars of other users. I'm hoping for a clue as to why this may be happening.

We have an open calendar policy in the company in which all users should be able to see/edit any entry in another calendar and to employ this policy, a previous Exchange admin has run a PS script which changed the Default user permission to {PublishingEditor}.

See below for an excerpt of a random user's calendar permissions.

FolderName           User                 AccessRights                                                                                
----------           ----                 ------------                                                                                
Calendar             Default              {PublishingEditor}                                                                          
Calendar             Anonymous            {None}                                                                                      
Calendar             Rob B                {PublishingEditor}                                                                          
Calendar             Global Leave Appr... {PublishingEditor}                                                                          
Calendar             Managers             {PublishingEditor}                                                                          
Calendar             Calendar Administ... {Editor} 

I have managers trying to enter an appointment into this person's calendar only to have outlook tell them that access is denied. It seems to happen randomly and to different people (it will work some days and not others). Our users use a range of clients from Outlook 2007, 2010 to 2013.

At first I thought it was due to nested distribution groups within security groups and an inheritance issue of some sort but reviewing the permissions, there should technically not be any issues considering the Default permissions across all calendars are {PublishingEditor}.

I guess the only potential cause I can see with a denial of access seems to be the Anonymous user; maybe there is some background issue where users are not being authenticated? There's nothing else anywhere that would serve up a deny for access. What is everybody's thoughts on the matter?

UPDATE:

I've updated Exchange to CU5 in case there were any hotfixes which addressed this issue. There were some indexing errors which I have no reindexed and confirmed they are healthy. I've also reconfigured most of the AccessRights on all mailbox calendars to be the following:

Default {Editor}
Anonymous {AvailabilityOnly}
Calendar Administrators {Editor}

One particular user is a member of Calendar Administrators but is still experiencing issues - he cannot view several calendars now.

I've completed a successful mailbox import request into the archive mailbox for a particular user. There are no errors to speak of and the size of the archive mailbox has grown to the expected size after import (approximately 6GB).

However, in OWA I can't see any of the mail folders inside the archive mailbox, only Deleted Items and RSS feeds folders. However if I run some cmdlets to list the contents of the Archive Mailbox\Inbox folder in the Exchange Shell, the full list of subfolders will come up.

If I do a mail item search on the archive mailbox, emails from those individual folders appear as search results! I just can't see the folders in the navigation pane and hence cannot browse any of my old emails.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have an MS Exchange 2013 SP1 Environment with an Edge Server in the DMZ.
I have several email domains added to the accepted domains and all are authoritative.

For the purposes of this query, we will call them:

yyy.com (catch-all) zzz.com (catch-all) 123.com (catch-all)

abc.com (mailbox email policy)

Three of these domains do not receive many emails and I am trying to get every email coming to these domains into my personal mailbox in the form of a catch-all.

I've set up a transport rule as follows:

If the message...recipients's address domain portion belongs to any of these domains: 'yyy.com' or 'zzz.com' or '123.com'

Do the following...Redirect the message to '[email protected]'
and Stop processing more rules

Except if...Is sent to 'Inside the organization'

I've disabled (to the best of my knowledge) the recipient filtering on both the MBX and Edge server but when I send to [email protected], it will still bounce back saying that the user does not exist.

Have restarted the transport service after each change and still to no avail.

These are the commands I ran:

[PS] C:\>Set-RecipientFilterConfig -Enabled $false
[PS] C:\>Disable-TransportAgent "Recipient Filter Agent"

These succeeded on the Edge server but returned the following error on the Mailbox Server:

Transport agent "Recipient Filter Agent" isn't found.
Parameter name: Identity
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Disable-TransportAgent], ArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=SV-EXCH-01,RequestId=564e806d-465e-40e9-b120-6e7ae554f1f1,TimeStamp=13/08/2014 8
   :31:56 AM] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-ArgumentException] 11DD97EF,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.AgentTasks.DisableTra
  nsportAgent

Any help or feedback would be much appreciated!

I'm running a few Windows Server 2008 R2 servers with domain computers running Windows XP SP3. Client side extension is installed.

I opted to use Group Policy Preferences over the conventional VBScript to map drives but it keeps returning an error code 0x80070035. I have no idea why this is happening as I can access the shared folder from the explorer once I log in. Furthermore, it works fine when it's mapped via a login VBScript!

Maps as action "Update" on drive "P:" on "\SV-APP-001\Public Share\", Reconnect enabled.

I'm 100% sure the group policy is applying correctly as I've done a GP Results run and it's also spitting the error into the events log on the workstation.

Other things I've tried:

• Allowing the SYSTEM account full access to the share.
• Changed the path to an IP instead of the computer name.
• Ticked the "Run in logged-on user's security context" option.
• Slam the keyboard into the screen in frustration.

Any other suggestions or ideas?

Before I begin, I'm aware of all the issues that can arise from installing VMWare server on a DC. I did it anyway for a learning experience.

I'm trying to run a linux distro on my DC so I need to virtualise rather than run another box. My domain is pretty small so I'm not worried about load issues but the virtual network adapters VMware creates are affecting my DNS and generating all sorts of errors.

I'm not 100% sure but it looks like VMware requires the virtual adapters to work properly so there's no way of avoiding that issue. However, I might be able to disable the connections from registering with DNS.

edit:

VS creates a series of virtual network adapters which register as actual NICs in Windows. Since the machine is a DC, it will register these into DNS and may cause confusion when trying to resolve the server's name. I'm aware of the problem but am desperately trying to avoid having to migrate the DC/exchange to a virtual machine to get everything working in the one box. Therefore, I'm after some possible solutions to this problem.

Backup Exec 10D, Win2K3 SBS, Exchange 2003. I'm trying to do a restore job from a tape on exchange which only houses 1 mailbox store.

I've created the Recovery Storage Group and linked it to the original Mailbox Store, made sure that it was dismounted and then tried the recovery job. It spits the error:

Job ended: Friday, 12 November 2010 at 3:10:29 PM
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe000ff00 - Unable to restore some Microsoft Exchange components because one or more of the databases are currently mounted.  Use the Exchange System Manager to dismount the databases, and then retry the job.
Final error category: Resource Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-65280

I haven't tried to dismount the main Mailbox Store as there are still users on the system. I tried a registry key hack to ignore the state of the mailbox stores but ended up with this error:

Job ended: Friday, 12 November 2010 at 3:29:40 PM
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe000fe30 - A communications failure has occurred.
Final error category: Server Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-65072

I am wondering whether I will need to dismount the main store and whether there is a possibility that current data will be overwritten with old.

I've been pulling my hair out over trying to get certain users onto DHCP classes to either filter their internet or allow unfiltered internet access. Basically I've got a transparent squid proxy running on 192.168.1.235 and gateway of 192.168.1.1. I've established some DHCP classes: "rstrc" and "unrstrc" and some vbs scripts which run ipconfig /setclassid "Local Area Connection" rstrc or unrstrc.

I first tried GPs to run the scripts but these would not work for normal users as they don't have permissions to change network connection settings. To get around this, I thought I'd run the rstrc script as a startup script for domain PCs (a GP sitting in the forest which has a security filter for domain computers) - again this didn't work.

Finally, I tried setting the default gateway to 192.168.1.235 and adding users in the Team Leader; the group then is a member of Network Configuration Operators. This didn't work either. So I tried changing it to Administrators and my test user in the Team Leader group can't even change the time! Tried restarting the local workstation, logging off, etc etc etc. Just can't get it to work and am going to start a bonfire soon.

Am I missing something here? Any help would be appreciated!

I recently got an i5 processor on an ASUS P7P55D LE motherboard to act as a cheap server only to realise that there are no windows 2003 drivers for the chipset and network. I haven't tried yet but can I install the XP drivers onto a 2003 machine and hope for it to work? Or should I go down the ubuntu virtualisation route?

If so, would I expect any performance issues with virtualisation of Win2K3?

We have about 25 employees in our current office and are looking to open up another office in another capital city housing about 15 employees. In our current office, we are running a domain hosted by a 2003 SBS server and I've been tasked by the boss to expand our infrastructure to the new office in the cheapest way possible (cheapest way in the short run that is, because my boss doesn't think more than 6 months ahead).

So I'm looking to get a second hand server and have it run Server 2003 Std with exchange server 2003. These are the things that it needs to do:

1. Replicate shared folders that are hosted in the parent LAN.
2. Deliver emails hosted in the parent Exchange Server
3. Somehow link up with the parent domain controller and push the AD to the remote site

I'm pretty sure 3 is impossible but the DC would be available if a VPN connection is present, right? On that note, would I be looking at hardware VPN connections?

I'm not sure how to deploy the new site as this is my first time doing it and i'm making it especially difficult for myself, seeing as the AD and DC is on an SBS server. Would I first start by establishing a VPN connection and then joining the new server to the domain? Will things 'just work' if I install exchange onto the new server and point outlooks to it? and how would I be able to replicate shared folders?

I've got Ubuntu and Squid running on a machine acting as a transparent proxy and a default gateway for many pc's on my network, which means all internet bound activity comes through the interface to be filtered before leaving for the router (192.168.1.1). HTTPS/SSL (443) does not work because packets on port 443 will come in and hit a wall as I have no rules specified for it.

How do I use iptables to create a passthrough for 443 connections?

----------------- EDIT -----------------------

Managed to get https working after setting the proxy settings for SSL to point to the squid box. However, if I were making a linux router (which I sort of am), would it mean SSL would never work unless I have a proxy running? The IP address for the linux box is 192.168.1.235 and i've set a test computer running winXP to that as its default gateway. Surely there's a way to allow 443 SSL to "pass through" without even touching on the proxy?

I'm also a tad confused as to why https is working at all...I haven't got any sort of routes or anything in the iptables that deal with 443. Any light shed on this would be greatly appreciated!

Can't get this to work at all! I'm trying to get this linux box to act as a transparent proxy and, with the help of DHCP, force everyone on the network to gate into the proxy.

I have two ethernet connections, both to the same switch. And I'm trying to get 192.168.1.234 to become the default gateway.
The actual WAN connection is to a gateway 192.168.1.1.
eth0 is 192.168.1.234
eth1 is 192.168.1.2

Effectively I'm trying to make eth0 a LAN only interface and eth1 a WAN interface. I've oi should set the gateway for eth1 to point to 192.168.1.234

my squid.conf file has the following directives added at the bottom: nly set eth0 to have a gateway address in /etc/network/interfaces I'm not sure whether http_port 3128 transparent acl lan src 192.168.1.0/24 acl lh src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.0 http_access allow lan http_access allow lh

i've added the following routing commands:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.2:3128
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128

I set a computer with TCP settings 192.168.1.234 as the gateway and opened up google.com, but it comes up with a request error. Any ideas why this isn't working? :( Been searching continuously for a solution to no avail.

----------------------------- EDIT ------------------------------- Managed to get it to route properly to the squid, here's the error I get in the browser:

ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to process the request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0



The following error was encountered:

    * Invalid Request 

Some aspect of the HTTP Request is invalid. Possible problems:

    * Missing or unknown request method
    * Missing URL
    * Missing HTTP Identifier (HTTP/1.0)
    * Request is too large
    * Content-Length missing for POST or PUT requests
    * Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed 

Your cache administrator is webmaster.
Generated Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:41:15 GMT by mjolnir.lloydharrington.local (squid/2.7.STABLE3)

I'm backing up about 100gb worth of data on backup exec and after much deliberation, have decided that tapes are worth another shot (after my ultrium decided to die and munch tapes). Bearing in mind that my SCSI controller might be on its way out, I'm looking for the most economical solution without sacrificing any quality.

I've been trying to decide between SCSI or SATA for the tape drive. I haven't had much luck finding SATA tape drives but from what I can see, they are approximately the same price for increased reading/writing speeds. It will, however, require me to buy a SATA controller card which may add to the cost. I'm not sure if my SCSI controller is on its way out, but I'm a tad skeptical about its integrity after the drive died (and it's onboard too which means the board may soon follow).

How do SCSI tape drives compare to SATA and is it worth the extra money? And if so, which tape drives (both SCSI and SATA) and what capacity should I be looking at to cover 100gb of data with incremental backups? What version of backup exec should I be looking at getting? I've got 10D installed atm.

We're running Windows Server 2003 SBS and another machine with Server 2003 Standard on it. The SBS server is about 7 years old running pretty much 24/7 - a HP server of some description. We have an Ultrium 448 cycling LTO2 400GB tapes daily and incrementally backing up approximately 100gb worth of data (20gb C:\ and system state, 40gb exchange, 40gb database for some crap marketing software) on BackupExec 10D. As of 5 months ago, the backups have been consistently failing with IO errors, bad reads and some write errors.

When I say consistent, I mean every time and we haven't had a proper backup for the entire 5 months - So if the server explodes tomorrow, 7 years worth of data will just cease to exist. I've only just recently rejoined the company and am looking at rectifying the more concerning problems, so the first thing I did was try a backup to an USB2.0 external drive. It was excruciatingly slow. In fact it was so slow it took 40 hours and it still wasn't finished. I ended up cancelling it and reconfiguring the selections again to reduce file size. This, however, isn't a permanent solution.

I concluded that the IO error was either from a faulty tape drive (which has a tape stuck in there right now and not coming out) or from a dying SCSI controller. Neither of them are good news and both are extremely expensive to fix. I'm operating on an extremely low budget so have been looking at outsourcing the backups.

A company in Sydney (where I'm located) offer incremental online backups via a NAS. It costs almost double a new tape drive but offers monthly repayments which will let us get through times when cash flow is minimal. It seems like a sweet deal but it is still a little bit pricey. So I'm looking for a cheaper, yet reliable solution. Maybe some in-house NAS or something offsite? The idea is to avoid using tapes.

Are there any recommendations for rectifying my current situation? Or are tapes the only way to go? I'm concerned that the server will die one day in the near future and I must be able to restore it to another server with different hardware.

I have a Windows server 2003 SBS running backup exec 10d. From what I understand, backup exec takes a snapshot of Exchange and backs that up; in that case, should I also back up the exchange database files or would this be redundant? Backups are mainly for disaster recovery, so would it be better to backup just the database files (.edb/.stm)?

From the selections screen, I can see Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes, Microsoft Public Folders, Microsoft Information Store > First Storage Group. Aren't the exchange mailboxes/public folders essentially on the information store? If I chose both, would it not double up?

On another note, do I need to backup the entire C drive to restore AD in the event, say for example, the server motherboard fries and we have to restore SBS to another server with different hardware? What component do I have to select to backup the AD and ensure I can recover to a different server?

We're currently running Win2K3 SBS as the domain controller with an additional Win2K3 server for hosting files and not really doing much else. We are probably looking at expanding to other offices in the near future.

I'm thinking of having a central domain controller with a win2k3 server at each site replicating the AD, shared files/documents, group policies, etc whilst running exchange server independently at each site - i.e. emails will be [email protected] or [email protected] with MX records pointing to the IPs accordingly. This way, I figure that there won't be a need for a constant VPN link and there won't be many disconnection issues if user's directories, files and AD's are all local. Without having separate domains for each of the sites, it means that I can manage the whole shebang by myself.

I'm not exactly sure if this sort of thing is even possible with SBS server. If so, what OS should I be running as the central domain controller? How do I set it up so that AD and share directories, GP etc replicate to the remote servers? Can I run multiple Exchange servers on the same domain?

Any help is greatly appreciated!