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Exchange 2010 Backups fail with Replica Writer Error
We had a backup fail this week with an error stating something to the lines of Exchange Writer is in a failed state. After some digging around I found that the Microsoft Exchange Replica Writer was in a failed state. To check the writers do the following: Open the command prompt on the Exchange server where the backup is failing. (In my case the server with the passive copies) In the command prompt type: vssadmin list writers and hit enter. You will now see a list of all the writers with their current state. The picture below shows the writer in the failed state. To resolve this issue I had…
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When installing Exchange 2010 you receive “The start mode for the Net. TCP Port Sharing service must be set to Automatic before Setup can continue”
During my lab testing and installing Exchange Server 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 I keep receiving this pre-requisite that fails. The start mode for the Net. TCP Port Sharing service must be set to Automatic before Setup can continue. As far as I know (I might be wrong) this pre-requisite only fails the readiness check on Windows Server 2008 R2. In order to set the Net.TCP Port Sharing Service to Automatic at start-up do the following: Open Power Shell on the Windows 2008 R2 Server that you are trying to install Exchange 2010. Type: Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic Hit enter. Run the Exchange installation wizard again and you should be…
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Outlook Web Access not displaying correctly when using IE 10 and Exchange 2003
Tonight I was busy patching my servers for the monthly scheduled patch cycle and tested Outlook Web Access from my home PC. I received the results below. After almost having a miniature heart attack, I tested Outlook Web Access from my work laptop (IE 8) and home PC using Chrome. OWA displayed and functioned correctly as expected. I then checked the IE versions. Home PC = IE 10 (Recently upgraded) Work Laptop = IE 8 After a quick search on the internet I found an article by Pete Long who posted a work around on his blog. It seems like IE 10 is…
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Error stating “Please select a root (/) partition before proceeding” when trying to install to a selected partition in Manjaro
I got my hands on a Manjaro Linux distribution today and decided to install and play with it. I got confronted with the below error after running through the initial setup steps and trying to choose the partition that Manjaro needed to be installed to. After trying a few things and lots of disk partitioning I found how to install Manjaro to the root partition as shown in the short video below. This would hopefully save you some time and get to installing and enjoying Manjaro. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM_qzG6brZQ]
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User is unable to access his mailbox using Outlook WebApp or with the Outlook client
We had quite a mind twister yesterday with a user that was unable to access his mailbox using his Outlook client nor Outlook WebApp. Some history on this issue: We have a 3rd party company migrating the users to our Exchange systems. This means that some duplicate accounts are being migrated to our Active Directory environment. The duplicate accounts obviously started confusing people and some tech’s deleted wrong accounts and mailboxes etc. Overall it got quite messy a few times. A lot of “decryption of information” is done by the time the incidents reaches my team. This particular problem was quite interesting because we asked the desktop engineer to access Outlook WebApp to test if…
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The font is very small and the recipient sees very LARGE fonts when composing a new e-mail in Outlook
I was contacted this week with a very interesting problem when a user is composing a new e-mail in Microsoft Outlook this week. The problem: The user starts to compose a new e-mail but the font is really small. When the recipient receives the e-mail they found that the font is very big on the recipients side. Now this could be a very confusing issue if you think about it. How does the font just change size from the sender to the recipient? First things most people would look at is the mail filtering applications or devices that their companies use. This brings me to the old saying in IT,…
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A new Scam where criminals claim they need to install software on your device to resolve problems with it.
Yesterday my mom received a call from someone claiming that they are phoning from “Microsoft”. They told her that they are receiving data or logs from her home computer and that something is seriously wrong on the computer. They then explained that “Microsoft” would like to assist her to resolve the problems. The caller also told her that they see the motherboard is faulty, which should set off a million alarm bells as I doubt that Microsoft would even care if your home computer is having hardware problems. He then proceeded by telling her that to resolve the issue he needs to get her to install a piece of software. Thank…
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Getting your guests in Virtual Box to communicate with each other
I’ve built quite a few labs using Virtual Box but tend to forget how to get the guests to communicate with each other. Below is a quick video that I put together to show how to set up Virtual Box to get this working. This is helpful with adding member servers to domain controllers and getting a complete AD site running. Another thing shown is how to setup sharing to access data from your guests that reside on the host machine.
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Changing the weather forecast location and temperature unit in Outlook 2013’s Calendar
I’ve installed Office 2013 a few days ago and tonight when opening the calendar I saw a nifty feature at the top showing the current weather forecast (including 2 days in the future) with the minimum and maximum expected temperatures. I needed to change the location and temperature unit as the default was for New York and the temperature unit in Fahrenheit. To be honest I would have thought that Outlook should be able to pick a default city for my time zone but it’s not a big deal. Below is a short video on how to change this if you are running Outlook 2013. (View the video in 1080p for…
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Adding additional clocks for Windows 7
I do quite a lot of online sim racing and most races are UK/European time and some US time. Gadgets must be the answer! Well n, not really. Stumbled across a way to add additional clocks in Windows 7 which is quite nifty and quick to check the time in another time zone or country. Check out my video below on how to add additional clocks in Windows 7. Note : It looks like you can only run up to 3 clocks maximum. For more you should search for an application or Windows Gadget.
