tcv's questions

A client of mine uses Remote Desktop Services publish through RemoteApp to individual workstations.

One of the users is complaining about an issue with a program that uses multiple windows. She runs Windows 10 Professional Fall Creators Update 2017. She has two monitors, one of which has a smaller resolution that the other.

Often times what happens when she resizes one of the windows, parts of the content, where the window edges would be, disappear. If she maximizes on the larger resolution monitor, the window pokes over into the smaller screen.

Microsoft identified a problem with the Fall Creators version of mstsc.exe and will issue a hotfix later this month. However, this problem pre-dates that update.

Is there a way to fix this so that the user can move between monitors and resize or maximize windows without these issues?

My RDS 2008 Terminal Server (domain-joined) allows anyone to login remotely. I am trying to restrict that down to one Security Group: DOMAIN\TerminalServerUsers.

I've been testing with a new user who is only a member of Domain Users.

The Remote tab under Terminal Server shows Domain\Domain Admins and DOMAIN\TerminalServerUsers.

Local Security Policy Allow Logon Through RDS shows Domain\Domain Admins and DOMAIN\TerminalServerUsers.

Local Security Policy Allow Local Login shows Domain\Domain Admins and DOMAIN\TerminalServerUsers.

Local Security Policy Deny Logon Through RDS is blank

Group Policies do not show alterations to policies relating to RDS.

Where else might I restrict Terminal Server users down to a group?

I am troubleshooting a workstation/server instance in which an application hangs while interacting with our Windows 2003 Server OpenBase-hosted database.

In short, the application will go into "Not Responding" for 45-seconds or more while doing certain functions.

I'm hoping for some general ideas on how to troubleshoot what the application is waiting for exactly. Other workstations that run this software in the environment don't exhibit the problem but our server is definitely a little worse-for-wear.

I'd like to find out things like: Is the program waiting for a response from the database server? Has the desktop antivirus stepped in front of the application?

The answer may be: Keep poking with Process Explorer and Process Monitor.

Any ideas are welcome.

Thank you!

Is there a command or GUI option to get a list of outbound connections. Ideally, I'd like to know the internal IP address, the external IP address, and the remote port used.

I don't need a lot of history, but an hour or two is helpful.

Earlier today, we attempted to update the Broadcom BCM5716C network drivers on a Windows Server 2003. (Dell PowerEdge T310, FWIW). Since then we have not been able to boot the server in any normal mode. Safe Mode works.

Safe Mode with Networking and regular bootups hang at "Applying Network Settings." I haven't tried Last Known Good Configuration nor have I tried Directory Services Restore Mode. I should also mention that the longest I've allowed "Applying Network Settings" was perhaps 30 minutes.

I spoke to Dell since the server is under a basic warranty. They sent me the original Broadcom drivers. The trouble seems to be, however, that since I can only boot in Safe Mode, I can't install the application package as given. In safe mode, I receive the error: "The system administrator has set policies to prohibit this installation."

I can install the drivers independently, but that doesn't allow the NICs to work. The most I've been able to get are Code 10 errors on each NIC.

I plan to get back to the site tomorrow to attempt installation of a different NIC.

I'm wondering what else I can try.

In reference to this question, I've been working with skv to fix their glue records and I'm sort of wondering what I should be seeing. They've called DNSMadeEasy and got assistance creating the glue records.

Here's what I see when I query a TLD server:

dig +norec @e.gtld-servers.net. skv.com NS

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> +norec @e.gtld-servers.net. skv.com NS
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 36825
;; flags: qr; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 12

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;skv.com.           IN  NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
skv.com.        172800  IN  NS  ns1.primuscomputing.com.
skv.com.        172800  IN  NS  ns2.primusnetworks.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.80.124.4
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.80.125.4
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.80.126.4
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.80.127.4
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.94.148.4
ns1.primuscomputing.com. 172800 IN  A   208.94.149.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.80.124.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.80.125.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.80.126.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.80.127.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.94.148.4
ns2.primusnetworks.com. 172800  IN  A   208.94.149.4

This seems to indicate that the glue records are in place.

However, if I perform a whois on skv.com, I don't see IP addresses next to the servers listed. I called Network Solutions to ask them and they said that information cannot be altered and indicated that the information would be added automatically?

The other thing is that when I don't receive an ADDITIONAL section when I dig skv.com NS.

Is it possible these items will get automatically updated as the changes propagates? Or is there more I need to do?

Thanks, all!

I'm caught in a technical war between two companies. One is a major email hosting organization. The second is a DNS provider called DNSMadeEasy.

The problem: An email from an outside domain to a domain inside the email host is intermittently delayed for two or more hours. The outside domain uses DNSMadeEasy for hosting and vanity nameservers.

The symptoms: postfix at the email host sends: 450 4.1.8 : Sender address rejected: Domain not found (in reply to RCPT TO command) deferred

It looks like some kind of DNS problem, but both DNSMadeEasy and the email host say there is no problem and point the finger at each other.

One of the techs at the email host passed the following information to me supposedly written by one of the senior techs:

Actually the problem with skv.com is here -- domain resides on

This is severe violation of RFC – there should be at least two NS servers for domain. The worst – this single NS server is not configured correctly. So finally we see that skv.com is served by single incorrectly configured NS server – skv.com needs to change the DNS hoster.

Additional Note: DNSMadeEasy says that there are SIX independent servers that work for skv.com.

Two Questions:

1. If you look at how the nameservers are specified for skv.com, do you see a problem?

2. Do you understand what the mail host is trying to say?

I'm trying to find out more information but both companies are digging their heels in.

I sometimes help a small office with a few issues. About two months ago, they were complaining of poor internet performance. Long story short, I found one person running Carbonite on a Mac that was pushing 2mb uploads all day. Shut down Carbonite and the problem -- which I saw as a 2mb consumption in a traffic graphic -- disappeared. I adjusted that user's Carbonite so that it would consume as much bandwidth as it could. (I forget the name of the setting.)

In that case, I went on-site and turned off everything until I found the problem workstation.

I think the problem is occurring again, indeed there is now a 2mb consumption hum in the traffic graph. I'd like to be a lot smarter about figuring out what's happening.

How would you approach identifying the workstation responsible?

(FWIW: Unless something has changed, Carbonite will not release enough information that would allow me to throttling those connections. Search Google and you'll see a whole lotta complainin' about this.)

Cheers,

Mike

We have conference rooms set up in Exchange to automatically accept meeting requests.

However, our users have iPhones, and there is not apparently any way for them to see whether a room is available before they request the room.

Is there any facility for our iPhone users to be able to see that information?

The only way I can think of to do this would be to configure a separate Exchange account referencing each conference room and only synchronize the calendar to their phones. The problem I see with this is primarily that they users can directly enter/delete/modify items on the calendars. I don't want them to do that.

This is my first foray into E2010 retention policies and I am unsure I understand it all completely.

What I am hoping to do is turn off AutoArchive for users within my organization. I suppose many of you have seen this: AA is on, it pops up, and silos a bunch of mails on the user's computer.

Over the years, I've found various ways to turn it off that have mostly worked but they're solutions that affect one install at a time or are inconsistently applied.

Now that the organization is in Exchange 2010, I wanted to know if a retention policy could work.

Our Outlook users are not all internal. Indeed, many of them are using the Exchange server via Outlook Anywhere on machines that are not joined to the domain. For this reason, I think that the Outlook Group Policy templates and settings would not work in this case. Perhaps I am wrong about that?

I should also note we have a couple of Outlook Mac users. No one is running Outlook 2003 or older.

Has anyone successfully turned off AA in any other ways?

Cheers,

M...

I have a customer who is using Outlook 2010/Windows 7 against an Exchange 2003 server. The application is a on a laptop, remains out of the office and Outlook is configured to use RPC/HTTP.

I'm finding an oddity regarding authentication to the server.

Here's what's happening:

1. The user can login to the Exchange 2003 server via Outlook 2010 if they authenticate with username/password.

2. However, Outlook populates the username field within the authentication prompt with "[email protected]" which the user cannot use to login to the Exchange server.

3. This means that with each Outlook launch, they have to remove @domain.com from the username field and type their password. (The user does NOT want to save her credentials. Interestingly, if she DOES save her credentials, Outlook logs in automatically without incident.)

I think the easiest solution here is to somehow force the Exchange server (or RPC) to allow authentication via the email address. However, I don't know how to get that to work.

Another note: the Windows domain is not the same as the user's email address. Exchange handles my user's domain for mail delivery, but the actual Windows domain is different. I would be okay with the user logging into Exchange with [email protected] (It is a .COM, not .LOCAL or the like.)

Cheers,

m

A user reported yesterday that the Recycle Bin function on his XP workstation had stopped working. I determined that the scope was a bit smaller than that. When he deleted a file from any of the Redirected folders (Desktop, My Documents, etc.), the Recycle Bin no longer functioned. The file was simply deleted. Deleted from a non-redirected folder worked fine.

I have read pretty extensively on the topic and understand that VSS is the preferable method of restoring a file when using redirection. Indeed, not only do I have VSS running but I also run hourly incrementals with a backup product. Still, there's a chance for complete loss and, well, the Recycle Bin worked for him before.

I do see a RECYCLER folder in the Redirected My Documents, so that seems to be right. And I just tried another workstation (albeit Windows 7 x64) and RB functionality is fine.

--

Update: I did some further testing tonight. It looks like this has been going on for a few months. Indeed, it's affecting all Windows XP users. I just deployed a Windows 7 machine for someone this week and his recycle bin is working fine.

--

Update x2: It seems like this stopped working for all XP-based users in July. I wonder if a security update was pushed from MS around that time that we installed? I'm still hopeful to resolve this, but my client doesn't care so much because of our backup procedures.

I am attempting to reproduce a condition in a lab and am hopeful to find a DHCP Server in which I can configure it to hand out tiny leases (20 seconds). So far, all I can find will not hand out leases smaller than one minute.

To be sure, this is part of a larger issue I am helping a firewall vendor reproduce. I'm trying not to go into overwhelming detail, but in essence what's going on is this.

Residential cable modems, when they have no sync on the cable side, will hand out a private IP in response to a DHCP Discover. The offer has the private IP with a tiny 20 second lease. The firewall/router is supposed to ask for a new IP/lease after the expiration. Two routers I have tested do. My firewall vendor's device does not seem to do this. Instead it hangs onto the private IP and never assigns the WAN IP after the cable modem has synced.

The vendor is trying to reproduce this behavior in their lab. I'd like to try as well. The first step, I think is to find a DHCP Server in which I can configure these tiny leases. I have a suspicion that the firewall is not honoring the tiny lease.

Anyone aware of a DHCP server like this? Windows or Linux.

Some-thing or Some-one is changing file permissions occasionally on files on my Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller.

I'd like to track these changes. Initially I thought one could do this with Auditing via the Default Domain Controllers Policy, but while there is File Access auditing, I can't seem to find any sort of tracking for permissions changes.

I'd like to know if permissions changes happen on a certain set of files and directories whether a human or an application/service or even a disk error makes the change. I'd like to see what has changed, when it has changed and, possibly, what did it.

Is this possible?

A long time ago, I worked for a company that had a neat in-house utility that did something very simple. It's allowed you to write a file at a size you specify. It would then read that file back and check it for errors. You could write the file to a local disk, a mapped network share, or a UNC path (presuming you had permissions, of course).

Using this utility, I was able to narrow down the source of very intermittent file corruption one day. (Turned out an on-board DRAM module in a RAID produced an occasional memory error.)

I would really, really like to get some utility that performs this same function. I am not asking for the utility this company produced, but rather something that does a similar function.

Edit: I prefer a Windows utility. CLI is fine.

I've recently created a Mailbox Management task within Exchange 2003 that, every night, looks at the contents of the Deleted Items within a particular mailbox and deletes mail that's 30 days or older.

The scheduled task ran on its own last night and I have confirmed that messages within the right mailbox and the right folder were, in fact, processed. Many mails were deleted ... but not never email older than 30 days. In fact, the choice seems kinda random.

Last night 3/10/2010 was the 30 day watermark. Mails were deleted from 3/10/2010, sure enough, but not all of them. Mails older than 3/10/2010 were deleted as well, but, again, not all of them.

The only criteria I have on the management -- aside from the single mailbox and single folder scopes -- is the age criteria. The size criteria is set to Any, meaning I don't care about the size. I care about the age.

It's made me wonder where there is some sort of limit on how many mails can be processed?

The schedule is set for 12am and 1am every night.

Any hints appreciated.

EDIT: Here are pics.

And here's an example of one of the reports:

    The Microsoft Exchange Server Mailbox Manager has completed processing mailboxes
Started at: 2010-04-10 22:52:01
Completed at:   2010-04-10 22:52:10
Mailboxes processed:    1
Messages moved: 0
Size of moved messages: 0.00 KB
Deleted messages:   114
Size of deleted messages:   4.41 MB

That report up there is from a MANUAL run of the Mailbox Management Process. If I run it again I get another report stating that nothing was deleted.

We have a small situation that may require us to temporarily host DNS requests on a temporary server for a customer's domain. We think we can use our SBS 2008 to do this. I've proven it can work, in theory, but I'm wondering if I am not anticipating something.

The situation, in case anyone has a better answer, is thus:

We are attempting to move a domain name from GoDaddy to Network Solutions. Predictably, we want to minimize downtime. The domain name in question has a few DNS related records -- a couple of As, a few CNAMEs, MX, and one SRV.

When I spoke to NetSol, they stated that there was no way I could alter anything DNS related on their side until the domain transfer had completed. So, I would be likely to encounter a domain name waking up in its new home with no DNS records available to keep mail flowing, web site accessible, etc.

They suggested we host DNS temporarily at a way-station of sorts.

I created a new ZONE in my SBS2008 along with all the A, CNAME, etc. records for the domain. I tested via NSLOOKUP and confirmed that accurate information is given both when I query against the server internally and when I let DNS queries through the firewall and query from the outside.

I believe all I really need to do now is change the nameserver entries at GoDaddy.

Am I not anticipating anything?

Cheers,

m

Note: This is re-telling of a message I just posted to Google's support forums.

Well, this week has not been good.

I have five clients on Postini. All of the clients accounts were purchased directly, either slightly before or during the Google acquisition. In each case, the service Just Worked. Spam filtering was immensely effective. We knew that support was dicey, at best. In the one or two times we've had to contact Postini/Google for help, they weren't for urgent issues. So, the 24-36 hour response time was O.K. ... scary, but O.K. The service worked so well that we put our heads in the sand.

This week all five clients' accounts have been deactivated. These all came without warning. We've received no emails to the registered administrator accounts since the day the accounts were activated. We do not have access to the billing portal and have never been able to get access to the support portal. The manual renewal, suggested on the forums, doesn't work for me. All clients are getting killed with spam, of course.

The ONLY communication I've had with Google in these last 24 hours is a response to a support ticket indicating that I "want to deactivate" my service and "upgrade it" The responder warns, however, that we would lose all configurations and the service would not be available to us for up to a week. I have responded that this is not what I am asking to do; I want to reactivate my account, to continue it.

So, in a way, I am begging to put money in Google's hands. Please! Let me renew! And yet there's no way to do it. At least, not obviously.

Laughably, it's been simpler and quicker to sign up all five clients with a competitor service. This kills me. I know that service isn't going to be as successful as Postini. But, alas, Google has shut me out.

Of course, I am hopeful someone with Exciting News will chime in, point out a URL or (God forbid) a damned phone number with a live human on the other end.

Sure, shame on me for not preparing for the worst. But, really, why should I expect all five clients, who were not activated at the same time, be deactivated simultaneously? And with no quick, definitive way to contact support? Really? What year is this?

If anyone has any suggestions on what to do, please let me know. Otherwise, I have to continuing moving my clients. :-(

This is the latest:

The Terminal Server and TS Licensing features have been uninstalled from the upgraded server. RDP access is allowed in the Remote tab. (Check out the comments on the first answer for that detail, if necessary.) Still, RDP access is broken.

I found out that the Terminal Server service in the Services MMC is broken. First, it still contains the Windows 2000 description. Second, it points to the old Win2k Server executable. It obviously doesn't work.

I have a Windows 2000 DC that was running Terminal Services in Application Mode. A couple of weeks back, I ran an in-place upgrade to 2003. The server is now running 2003 R2 Standard.

Since then RDP no longer works. We have no need or desire for this to be a Terminal Server anymore other than Administration Mode.

What I am really trying to accomplish is the following:
Place the upgraded 2003 server into Remote Desktop for Administration.

(Interestingly, the "Licensing" setting within the Terminal Services Configuration MMC is not visible.)

At the moment, Terminal Services is installed on the server, but licensing is not. We were trashing around trying to resolve this and that's the state we've left the server. I've since discovered that for a typical configuration, neither the Terminal Services nor the Licensing features should be installed.

If anyone has any thoughts, they are appreciated.

Also: This is a production server. I can reboot it, but must do so off-hours.

Some new details:

RDP is "broken" in the sense that when any client attempts to initiate a connection to the server, they immediately receive a "This Computer cannot connect to the remote computer" error.

Also: There is no "Remote" tab within the Properties sheet for My Computer.

m

Suddenly and inexplicably the Outlook Web Access site on one of the SBS 2003 sites I manage is down. To my knowledge, nothing has changed on the server and we've rebooted it to see if the site comes back up. It doesn't.

It doesn't work from inside or outside the network. Web browsers give a "cannot display the web page" style error. The most information I've been able to glean is from Chrome which states: Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): Unknown error. I don't know if that's a false clue however.

I have very limited (read: none) skills at troubleshooting IIS. Can anyone point out some useful tips?

Cheers,

Mike...