While working on my latest project, I encountered a significant number of objects with malformed SMTP addresses. These appeared to have been objects that had been somehow manually modified over the years by directly writing to the proxyAddresses attribute in Active Directory, bypassing an API that would check for correctly-formatted addresses.… [ Continue reading ]
Finding Active Directory objects with Inheritance Disabled
From time to time, an issue that crops up during Exchange or Office 365 migrations is the dreaded “insufficient access rights:”
It’s commonly manifested like this (though I have seen it displayed other ways as well):
… [ Continue reading ]Warning: Unable to update Active Directory information for the source mailbox at the end of the move.
Switching from Federated to Cloud Auth (AD FS to Dirsync/AADSync + Password Hash Sync or Password Hash Sync Failover)
A few years ago, we released “DirSync with Password Hash Synchronization,” and it was kind of an all-or-nothing choice. You could either have a synchronized account database with synchronized password hashes (so users would authenticate in the cloud), or a federated environment. … [ Continue reading ]
Cannot create Exchange Online Migration Endpoint with Exchange 2007 Server using only NTLM Authentication
I’ve been battling an issue for a few days now and finally stumbled upon a workable solution via PowerShell.
Scenario
One of my customers has an existing Exchange 2007 deployment. The OWA instance is configured to only use NTLM authentication. ExRCA (http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com… [ Continue reading ]
Re-create BITS and Windows Update Services for Windows 7
So, you had a bit of nasty malware. You’re almost back to square one, but have now found yourself in the unfortunate position of having missing services–specifically the Background Intelligent Transfer Service and Windows Update services.
Never fear. These, too, can be recreated in the event that your System Restore points are borked. … [ Continue reading ]
More MD3000i Trickery!
Tonight I found myself recovering a VM on a Windows 2008 R2 cluster connected to an MD3000i SAN. To make very long and painful story short, it appears that someone applied a series of Windows Updates and then a Dell DSM update that screwed up the multipathing.… [ Continue reading ]
Exchange 2010 Messages Stuck in Retry status in “MapiDeliveryQueue”
In case your Exchange admin life wasn’t difficult enough, you can always have this problem, manifested with the following symptoms:
- Mail delivery hung
- Messages stuck in local delivery “MapiDeliveryQueue” with a status of “Retry”
Classic tactics such as restarting the server or right-clicking the queue and selecting “Retry” have no effect.… [ Continue reading ]
How to Join Windows XP Media Center to a Domain
During an SBS deployment, I ran into a few machines at my customer’s site that were running Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). As most of you know, the only machines that are technically eligible to join a Windows domain are “Business” class operating systems, such as Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise (although not technically “business” class, Windows Vista/7 Ultimate Editions are also able to join domains, since they’re supposed to be everything-but-the-kitchen-sink editions).… [ Continue reading ]
Fun with PIX, Part Deux : PIX Password Recovery
After getting my PIX to boot in my previous post, I decided to run through the password recovery procedures.
Requirements
- PIX recovery images (available from either the Cisco site individually or here in one ZIP file)
- PIX firewall software version
- TFTP server software (I used the TFTP server included in the PacketTrap pt360 Suite in this exercise)
- Terminal Emulator (I typically use PuTTY)
Steps
- Connect Ethernet 0 on the PIX to your local LAN.
Fun with PIX, Part I : Clearing the CMOS to Raise It From the Dead
When meeting with a potential customer the other day, she mentioned that she had a running PIX with an unknown password.
I thought I’d refresh my PIX skills and decided to bust out an old PIX 506E we had sitting in the office.… [ Continue reading ]
“Saved-Critical” for Almost-Clustered Virtual Machines in Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V
While staging a clustered Hyper-V environment this week, I ran into a head-scratching issue. After provisioning a few LUNs, masking them, and adding them as available storage to Failover Clustering, I began setting up the virtual machines on one of my cluster nodes.… [ Continue reading ]
Troubleshooting 0xc0190036 Errors on Windows Vista / Windows 2008
This morning, I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of the dreaded 0xc0190036 error. There is not a lot of information about this particular error code. It is, in fact, related to inaccessible or corrupt files.
During an update process, many files are flagged for replacement during the next system boot–that way, the system can keep running until the next convenient restart.… [ Continue reading ]
Active Sync Error 85010014 OTA with Exchange 2003
Recently, we renumbered a client’s network to reduce broadcast traffic and introduced two new redundant internet connections. Everything seemed fine in the initial testing, and we all went home.
The next day, when we were sifting through the fallout tickets, there was a recurring theme–Windows Mobile devices were no longer synchronizing.… [ Continue reading ]
Erratic or Negative Ping Times in Hyper-V Guests
A customer approached me with a some puzzling issues. They noticed a bunch of 1053 and 1054 Userenv errors in their event logs on their virtual machines. 1053 and 1054 error messages have very similar wording:
1053 – Windows cannot determine the user or computer name.… [ Continue reading ]
Using WinDbg for Quick Memory Dump Analysis
Blue screens are no fun. Trying to resolve them without the proper tools can be even less fun.
In my experience, a large percentage of blue screens are the result of some poorly-tested or incompatible third-party device drivers. For the desktop crowd, a round up of the usual suspects includes scanner, printer, and video drivers.… [ Continue reading ]