After performing a reboot of the Exchange server at a customer, one of the mailbox databases failed to mount and the error above was shown. During troubleshooting we noticed Event ID 419 in the Application log which led us to believe that some sort of corruption had occurred:

“Unable to read page number of database example.edb. Error –4001”

We then looked up the error code on the internet and found that this was a known issue caused by the 1st release of Update Rollup 3 for Exchange 2007 SP3 which had been applied in this environment. This led to a restore from backup being performed. If you applied Update Rollup 3 when it was initially released and your Exchange is version 08.03.159.000 then it is strongly advised that the re-release of Update Rollup 3 be applied as soon as possible. More details in the article below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2531163

Since coming back off holiday I noticed that my RSS feeds that I had spent so much time setting up were not updating. The first thing that I checked was the subscriptions set against the account which can be found in the following location in Outlook 2010 on the ribbon:

File –> Info –> Account Settings –> Account Settings –> RSS Feeds tab

I could see that it was empty. Removing the subscription does not remove the folders in Outlook which is why I could still see all of the previous items but not the new ones.

I set about putting all the RSS feeds back in and then looked at backing them up just in case this were to happen again or indeed if anyone else wanted to have the same feeds that I set up.

The procedure for backing them up is:

File –> Open –> Import

You then get presented with the wizard screen, just select the “Export RSS Feeds to an OPML file”, click on next and select the RSS feeds that you want to backup. Again click on next and save the file with a name to where you want.

Your RSS feeds are now backed up.

To import them from a OPML file simply right click on your RSS Feeds folder in Outlook and select the option to “Import an OPML File”, then browse to the file and select the RSS feeds that you want to import:

It should automatically create the folder if there is not one already there.

Hope this helps.

Paul

We had a request recently to list what users have rights to a specific users mailbox.

This can easily be done using the following command.

Get-MailboxPermission –Identity “UserName” | fl user, accessrights

This gives an output like below.

If you would like to see permissions for every users mailbox run the following command

Get-MailboxPermission -Identity * | fl user, accessrights , identity > C:\Perms.txt
(You can change the file location to wherever you would like)

The list of the Users and Permissions will all be in the Perms.txt file.

Here is a quick command line that you can run as any user that will tell you if you are running Windows 32bit or 64bit.

wmic OS get OSArchitecture

This should output something similar to this:

There is a PowerShell equivalent as well:

(gwmi win32_computersystem).SystemType

This may be useful for anyone who is using remote commands in PowerShell.

Paul

On a customer site we noticed that the time was 20 minutes out on all servers. The PDC emulator was configured to sync with time.windows.com however when running w32tm /resync it was failing with the following error:

After checking the outbound NTP firewall rule for time.windows.com, we noticed that the IP address had been specified rather than the FQDN.

We ran an NSLOOKUP to find the IP address had changed to 207.46.232.182

Here are 2 useful queries which will allow you to create separate x86 and x64 Windows 7 SCCM collections which will come in handy when your pushing out programs that are architecture specific.

Windows 7 x86

select
SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where (SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like “%Workstation 6.1%” or SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like “%Windows 7%”) and SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.SystemType = “x86-based PC”

Windows 7 x64

select
SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where (SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like “%Workstation 6.1%” or SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like “%Windows 7%”) and SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.SystemType = “x64-based PC”

We came across an issue where large tape backup jobs that spanned multiple tapes would fail a full tape wasn’t swapped out within 1 hour in our standalone tape library.

The timeout for the “Job waiting for tape” alert can be increased by changing the “PromptingTimeOut” registry entry found under “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\1.0\Prompting”

The value for this registry entry is to be increased in milliseconds, below are some you made find useful:

2 hours = 7200000
12 hours = 43200000
24 hours = 86400000 
48 hours = 172800000

Microsoft have recently released a whole bunch of new material for Lync Server 2010. Below I have highlighted some of the cool stuff :

Lync Server 2010, Stress and Performance Tool

The Lync Server 2010 Stress and Performance Tools (LSS) can be used to prepare, define and validate performance targets of user scenarios offered by on-premise Lync Server 2010 deployment. LSS includes multiple modules and can simulate simultaneous users on one or more Lync Servers. More detailed information can be found in the documentation provided within the installation package.

Lync Server 2010 Bandwidth Calculator

A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that calculates WAN bandwidth requirements for a Lync Server deployment based on administrator-specified user profiles and network information.

Lync Server 2010 Web Scheduler

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Web Scheduler provides a Web-based online Lync meeting scheduling and management experience for Lync Server 2010.

Lync Server 2010 Capacity Calculator

A spreadsheet for calculating a user’s hardware requirements based on information about users and traffic.

We were running through an upgrade from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 in our test environment and came across this error when trying to attach a content database in 2007:

The pre-upgrade scan tool has not yet been run on this database SPContentDatabase Name=DATABASENAME Parent=SPDatabaseServiceInstance. You must run the pre-upgrade scan tool before you can continue with the upgrade process. Run the tool from the following path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin\prescan.exe.

We had already run the prescan.exe tool on the database and we thought that we had resolved the errors that it produced.

What we had to do is use an SQL query on the affected database in query analyser to find any sites that the prescan.exe tool could not successfully scan or access:

SELECT FullUrl, Id FROM Sites WHERE bitflags NOT LIKE ’262144′

In our case it only listed one personal site of a user that was no longer in use. We then ran the following command to delete the entry:

DELETE FROM Sites WHERE bitflags NOT LIKE ’262144′

After the record had been deleted we re-ran the stsadm.exe to attach the database and it did it successfully.

Came across an issue today where we were unable to reinstall SharePoint 2010 with the following error “The install in progress conflicts with a previously installed Microsoft Office 2010 Server product”

Previously office web apps was also installed on SharePoint but was remove via Add/Remove programs successfully. However i did a quick search in the registry and found that it still looked like some components remained from Office Web Apps. (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18)

I then decided to run the uninstall strings to remove these components (MSIEXEC Commands below)

Full List

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (Arabic) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-0401-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (German) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-0407-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (English) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-0409-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (Russian) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-0419-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (Spanish) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-0C0A-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Proof (French) 2010
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1141-040C-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Web Front End Components
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1144-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps English Language Pack
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-1145-0409-1000-0000000FF1CE}

Microsoft Office Web Apps Application Server Components
MsiExec.exe /X{90140000-112D-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}

After this i could re-install SharePoint 2010 with no errors