stead1984's questions

I have a Windows Server 2003 cluster of 2 nodes in an active-passive configuration. I can ping both nodes, rdp and access their unc shares.

I also have an alias, which directs to a cluster IP set in one of the cluster groups for SQL. (I'm not the SQL administrator and have had only a little exposure to it). This alias responds to pings and RDP goes to the active node, which works correctly.

However I can't access the UNC shares for that alias. The DNS record is obviously correct as it's handling ping and RDP ok.

What's interesting is that I can RDP to the alias (which in turn is the active node) and then try accessing the unc share of the \localhost or \127.0.0.1 fails also.

I've looked at other questions on here before opening the this question and checked recent updates etc. But I feel these don't relate to my issue.

This has worked for quite a while and the only thing that has changed is that we have had to bring the whole data center down recently for much needed power maintenance work. Which makes me question perhaps a service didn't start.

Also whats worth mentioning is, is that I would have liked to failover to the passive node and see if the problem persists on that but I have a rather small time frame to take the server down which is early in the morning so I'm trying to avoid that if I can.

Edit

My problem appears to be that all my groups, "Cluster Group" and "SQL Group" can be pinged and RDP'd by their cluster name and cluster IP, however I cannot access any UNC share on the cluster IP or name of any of my groups.

If I browse to \SQLGroupClusterName from any networked machine I get "The network path was not found" error.

If I rdp to SQLGroupClusterName (which works) then browse to \SQLGroupClusterName from QLGroupClusterName I get the same error message.

Firstly, I can't use Group Policy as our team doesn't manage that. The company is a massive FTSE company with a team for every aspect of IT you can think of.

Our team needs a way of installing programs remotely either by batch files or scripts utlising Windows Installer and .msi files.

I've so far managed to install Java using psexec (see below)

psexec \\pcname -u *username* -p *password* -i 
msiexec.exe /a "msilocation\install.msi"

This works without any problems. However I want something a little more automatic than that.

However what I would like to do is to be able to run a script or batch file from my machine that will install the msi on all remote workstations listed. I'm pretty certain you can list workstations in batch file but I maybe wrong.

I'm not to fussed if I have to do the fix in a script or batch file to be honest. I just can't use Group Policy etc.

What I'm trying to achieve is to simply reinstall Windows Script Host.

However I can't uninstall WSH and when I try to run the Windows Script Host 5.7 installer I get an error of;

Setup has detected that the Service Pack version of this system is newer than the update you are applying.

There is no need to install this update.

I can confirm I'm running WSH 5.6.

Any ideas?

I have a few workstations that can't run a network script for mapping network drives etc. I know the script works as it's working for everyone else.

But on 1 or 2 machines (out of 1000) the script won't run at all. I get an error "VBScript runtime error, error ID 800A046.

The script itself is fine, I'm pretty certain of that. Any ideas?

Also have tried as an admin account.

From line 501

      .Open
      .Write "<span id='theEnd'></span>"
      .Close
      Set oTheEnd = .all.theEnd
      .Title = sTitle

      With .ParentWindow.document.body
        .style.backgroundcolor = "LightBlue"
        .style.Font = "10pt 'Arial'"
        '.style.borderStyle = "outset"
        '.style.borderWidth = "4px"
        ' .scroll="no"
      End With
      oIE.Visible = True

    End With ' document
  End With   ' oIE
End Sub

Also worth noting this:

'main
Function main()
    On Error Resume Next

    'Map "<group>" , "<drive>:" , "\\server\<share>"
    Map "DummyGroupName" , "R:" , "\\Servername\Sharename"  

Log File

' Create logfile
If appendlogfile=True Then WriteFlag = 8 Else WriteFlag = 2 End If
sSystemdrive = oShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%USERPROFILE%")
Set logfile = oFSO.OpenTextFile (sSystemdrive & "\logon.log", WriteFlag, True)
logfile.Writeline "............................"

I'm planning of upgrading my physical server nodes to the latest service pack for Server 2008 R2.

In order to do this with as little downtime, I'm going to live migrate all VM's on one node to another so I can do the upgrade and then live migrate them back.

My question is whether the VM's will work on an upgraded service pack once they have been migrated over.

I have a virtual DC running DNS and Routing and Remote Access, that routes ALL workstations Internet traffic out to the Internet, this works fine but noticed that the Internet drops occasionally.

I've checked with our service provider (Managed Communications) and they are adamant that it's not their fault.

The Internet drops seem to affect everyone.

We also have a server configured to use the same Internet service on a different network over a site-to-site VPN connection which also suffers from packet drops.

I've spoken to Cisco and have done many tests with Cisco and they believe the problem is down to the ISP.

I'm wondering if it's a DNS issue, as the Internet service uses OpenDNS.

Any ideas?

I have a server at a remote site, the sites are connected to each other a site-to-site VPN connection using Cisco ASA 5510 firewalls. One end is managed by me, the other managed by the remote location's IT, between the 2 of us is another party who manage and route the connections.

Remote desktop has been working fine with no problems then recently I noticed it was working for ONE server over the VPN which it previously had done. All the routes seem fine and I can still ping the remote server and even download files from an FTP site on the remote server.... so the VPN seems fine.

Remote Desktop works fine to the remote server within the remote location but not over the VPN. I don't understand why it's stopped working, I originally thought it was a rule in place by the other party but they stress it's not them.

The only thing that has changed on the server initiating the RDP connection is that it now runs file services sharing a folder. The source server (remote location) may or may not have had updates applied.

Any idea's?

I've setup an NTP client for my DC to sync time with time.windows.com but I want it to query the NTP server at least twice a day. I made all the changes via the registry, is there a period registry I can amend and how?

Firstly all devices are ON and have an active/working network connection.

Secondly the device I'm trying to ping from is pingable from the devices I'm trying to ping!

Right, we have a secure VPN tunnel using a Cisco ASA 5500 which has a working VPN connection to a remote location, the remote location is on a 172.21.79.0 subnet. On our side we have a server than shouljd be able to ping IP's within this subnet, some IP's work, some don't.

The server is setup on the VPN connection as 10. address, it also has a domain connection on a 172.16 address. I've noticed that if I disable the domain connection all works fine, but if the domain connection is enable certain IP's on the 172.21.79.0 subnet are no longer pingable.

Thats the problem, I think the 2 network cards on separate networks is causing it.... but I'm stumped on how to fix it.

Another thing I should mention is that the server is running as a virtual machine in Hyper-V.

I have a domain controller running in VM on Hyper-V, the time seems to be steadily getting faster, over the X-mas period it's 5 faster, which seems odd!

I know how to change the time and I belive we setup an NTP server on the DC and ensured time-sync was turned off on Hyper-V.

I don't really want to keep setting the time. Is there a reason why the time is fast?

I have a Server 2008 R2 domain controller running in VM on Hyper-V that is 7 minutes fast which I need to fix. I understand that this maybe down to the DC running in VM's.

What I would like to know is how I can correct it?

I believe I can setup the DC to use a public/internet NTP server, but I don't know any or have any idea how to do. Also according to a few forums I may experience problems if the time is changed on the DC and that time is more than 3 minutes.

If anyone can help I would be very grateful!

I have a PC which is essential to the business as it runs our ironically named label system 'NiceLabel'. However since a colleague was too impatient to restart the machine when joining the PC to the domain it has decided that it doesn't want to join the domain... ever again!

I've renamed the PC and made it a member of a workgroup, when I try to join it to the domain it returns an error "The specified server cannot perform the requested operation" but it works for other PCs except this one.

Any ideas?

I have a working OWA internally and externally. Users can access OWA externally through https://domainname.com/owa and internally through the IP address. What I want is internal users to access OWA by browsing to https://domainname.com/owa rather than the IP address for obvious easy of use.

I plan to create my first DC and forest on a physical server, then I want to run a second DC on a virtual server that will replicate the first DC. I understand that this will provide redundancy for AD that if the first domain controller went down the second would resume until the first is back online. Would this work and how?

How do you create a deidcated forest root domain? I'm familiar with Active Directory and have used dcpromo.exe in 'Advanced Mode' but I'm not sure how to create a deidcated forest root domain?

Whilst I'm here will domain controllers that are a member of a forest still work if their forest was to go offline?

I have been tasked with replacing our current network using Windows Server 2008 Virtual Machines running on Hyper-V, my question is will a DC as 1 VM work and a RODC as another work on the same machine?

My colleague recently pinged our DC and instead of replying from it's static IP it replied from it's WAN Interface. I think it has something to do with the VPN connections we allow which we setup through Routing and Remote Access. The interface also has a DNS entry and it's in the same range as it's static IP.

Any idea's as to what it is, what it does, and why my colleague got a response from it rather than the static IP set?

I have 3 users that are useless and have forgotten to turn out off office on, I don't want to reset their passwords and use Outlook and would like to know how to use Microsoft Exchange 2007 to turn it on instead, also how to do it in Exchange 2003 on SBS?

I've been tasked with the job of building a web server and Intranet site using perhaps Joomla for creating an alternative to Microsoft Sharepoint and would like some advice of what steps to take and how to get started.

A bit of background is that we used Sharepoint which was included with our SBS server, and have migrated to Server 2003 and would like to have a solution as similar as can be to Sharepoint for FREE or a fraction of the cost. Ideally we would like it to be a central point for employees to use to keep upto date with Internal news, have a calendar, and links to stored documents like SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures).

I hope that explains it a bit better, sorry for being so unclear in my first post!

We have just purchased a Barracuda Spam Firewall 300, we have set it up but are having problems authenticating with our Exchange server (2007). I spoke to Barracuda about it and they said I need to exclude the Barracuda box from authentication from within Exchange, how do I do that?