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This is the ION Handy Tips Page
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This is the ION handy tips page. Please note that these tips contain instructions on changing Windows system settings and other configuration details. Any changes that you may make to your system are entirely at your own risk.
ION can provide a support professional to make these changes for you at a fixed rate charge.
Please call 0845 003 9470 and a support technician will be on hand to assist you. If you find any of these tips useful, please feel free to: A) Link to this page from your forum / blog post B) Mail support@ion-systems.net and let us know
If you find any errors or improvements, please let us know at support@ion-systems.net and we'll update them, giving you the credit!
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Explorer.exe restarts automatically or crashes when running CMD, Regedt32, Regedit or CMD Scripts
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Issue - Every time you try to run a CMD prompt, the registry editor or other Windows commands, all of the icons on the screen disappear and reappear as explorer crashes.
Fix - This is usually caused by a type of malware called a rootkit. Although your antivirus may have removed the kit, it will likely not have removed some of the changes that the rootkit made to your system which causes ongoing problems as described above.
Step 1 - Install Adaware, Anniversary edition.
You can download this from www.lavasoft.com
(Follow the links to the free version)
Step 2 - Run a full scan on your system and restart if prompted.
Step 3 - Click Start then Run (Vista users, hold the Windows key and R). Type Command and press OK
Step 4 - In the black window which appears type CD\windows\system32. Press return. Type copy regedt32.exe fixme.exe. Press return. 1 file should be copied.
Step 5 - Click Start, then Run. Type fixme and press OK.
Step 6 - In the registry editor, navigate to:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Drivers32
Look in the settings for oddly named files (such as jkrtsl.dll). Remove any entries that are not correct (they usually point to wdmaud.drv). Commonly, the infected setting is aux or aux2. If you are left without an aux setting, set it to wdmaud.drv (new string value).
Step 7 – Close the registry editor and restart your PC
Step 8 – Log back in, and everything should now work correctly!
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Missing Exchange Public Folder
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Issue: When you search for an Exchange Public Folder, the name appears when you search Active Directory Users and Computers, but not in Exchange System Manager. This is annoying, as ESM gives the logical path to the file but ADUC does not.
Answer: This is 99% of the time caused by the public folder being renamed. When the folder was renamed, the attribute "Folder Name" was updated, but the attribute "Address Book Name" was not. the ESM searches the latter name, and therefore can't find the newly named folder.
The best fix for this, is to run a quick VB script to dump both folder names and the folder path to a file for all folders. This is also handy for audit purposes or generally to assist with Public Folder management. I have attached a script to the end of this technote that I used to get the information. It is set to be run from the 2003 server console. If you're running it from a workstation, you will need to change the strServer entry to give the name of the Exchange server which houses the Public folders. Hope this is useful for you!
OutputFilePath = InputBox("Enter Output file name and location such as c:\output.txt", "Output File Name", "")
if OutputFilePath = "" then wscript.echo "Filename not entered"
if OutputFilePath <> "" then
wscript.echo "Click OK to start the export - May take several minutes to complete"
strServer = "."
Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strServer & _
"\ROOT\MicrosoftExchangeV2")
Set colItems = oWMI.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Exchange_PublicFolder")
Set sfs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set of = sfs.OpenTextFile(OutputFilePath, 2, True)
of.write ("Folder Name" & vbTab)
of.write ("Address Book Name" & vbTab)
of.write ("Folder Path" & vbTab & vbCRLf)
For Each Folder in colItems
of.write (Folder.name & vbTab)
of.write (Folder.AddressBookName & vbTab)
of.write (Folder.Path & vbTab & vbCrLf)
Next
wscript.echo "All Done"
wscript.echo "Open in Excel for the best looking results"
of.close
end if
To run this script, simply create a text file in (say) notepad and save it as whatever.vbs. You can then run the script by double clicking on it. Certainly helps when looking for Missing Exchange Public Folders!
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Backup Exec reports error 0xffff8101
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Issue:
Backup Exec was running great, and all of a sudden, it starts erroring when backing up to tape. Error is 0xffff8101 "error on a request to query entity information". Makes a lot of sense that, right?
In our case, this was running on Windows Server 2003, with Backup Exec 9.1.
Fix:
Various pages talk about running a database repair, and even resetting the database to defaults and simply starting again. In our case, however, it was just that the Windows RSM (Removable Storage Manager) was suddenly interfering with the tape drive and BEWS didn't like it. Removing the tape device from the RSM (which is easiest to find in computer management) did the trick.
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Globalsign Cert fails to work on Windows Mobile
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Ok, so you have just installed a GlobalSign Certificate on one of the servers in your Exchange infrastructure to stop the complaints about the self certified one you have been using and you find that some of your Windows Mobile phones / pdas can't use it.
You have tried importing the certificate manually (the old fashioned way) and ActiveSync still fails.
Basically you need to import a couple of extra certificates which for some reason either don't seem to be in the certificate chain or appear to be there but don't actually match.
You can find the two certificates in question at http://www.ion-systems.net/techtipsdl/GlobalSign.zip - Simply unzip, copy to the Phone or PDA and double-click each one.
The device will then be able to trust the new certificate.
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Step by Step BING Removal Instructions
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HOW TO REMOVE BING IN FIREFOX
Ok, be VERY careful with the Firefox config editor.
These instructions will allow you to go back to Google in Firefox - Bing is the new Microsoft search service which was probably added when you upgraded to IE8.
To get rid of the BING default search in Firefox simply open a Firefox window and type the following in the address bar:
about:config
Firefox will issue a warning asking you to confirm that you want to go into the config editor.
Click the 'I'll be careful, I promise!' button to proceed.
In the filter field at the top of the page, type in 'keyword.URL' (without the quotes)
This entry is the page that you are redirected to when you simply key words into the address bar, your search term is appended with the spaces replaced by the + character.
Double-click on the entry to edit the actual string and paste in the following:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=
Click Ok.
Google is now your default search page again.
Feel free to experiment with different page strings to get other search engines working, but unless you either know what you are doing, or enjoy reinstalling software, you probably don't want to edit any of the other entries through the firefox configuration page...
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Double Click opens search instead of folder
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When you Double-Click on either the My Computer icon on your desktop, or on a disk or folder through Windows Explorer, you get the Windows Search icon instead of the window you were trying to open.
Most of the time this can be fixed with the following command:
regsvr32 /i shell32.dll
I am told that another problem with the same symptoms can be fixed by changing the Default entry in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell to 'none' (obviously without any quote marks).
You may need to reboot after this, but double-click should work again.
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Server 2003 DC Autoenrollment gives error 13
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This is usually caused by permissions issues within the DCOM system on 2003 server. Typically, it occurs when one or more DC/GC is running SP1, or mismatched service packs.
To fix it, do the following:
- Checkout the group CERTSRV_DCOM_ACCESS.
Make sure that Domain Users, Domain Computers AND (often missing) Domain Controllers are members of this group.
- Checkout the permissions on C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA and the sub folder MachineKeys.
Make sure that Administrators, Domain Administrators and SYSTEM all have full control over these folders and files.
- Let the server know that the DCOM security permissions have been altered.
Run this on the server that runs the certificate services for the domain:
certutil -setreg SetupStatus -SETUP_DCOM_SECURITY_UPDATED_FLAG
- Restart the certificate services on the server that runs certificate services for the domain.
You can do this from the command line as:
net stop certsrv
net start certsrv
- Boot the offending DC(s).
Note that the DCs can take a LONG time to come back up and be fully operational, especially if autoenrollment was never working on the DC in question. On our systems, it took about 10 minutes before we could logon to the console and use the server.
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Dell T410 - SBS2008 has no network drivers
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OK. So, I got a nice new Dell T410 server for a client and started the 2008 Small Business Server install from the install DVD (they didn’t buy the software with the server).
All great, but the DVD doesn’t have drivers for the network cards and prompts for these in the second part of the installation. As it can’t find any network adaptors, it refuses to continue. The nics in question are NetXtreme II Gigabit adaptors by the way.
The issue, is that the Dell site doesn’t offer the drivers nicely extracted but instead as a useless setup.exe. To compound the problem, the setup.exe will not run on a 32bit O/S either so it’s tricky to find another machine to extract the files to.
In the end, I managed it on a new Windows 7 (x64) PC and “stole” the extracted drivers before the installation software removed them when it failed to find the adaptor. The files can be found at:
http://www.ion-systems.net/techtipsdl/T410/2k8x64/2k8S-x64-NIC.zip
Download, extract to a usb key or cd or whatever and then point the install at the folder. You may have to do the 4 times, as the install creates a system device first, and then the network device afterwards (for each of the 2 network interfaces). You can use the same path for each one though so it is fairly quick.
Anyway, hope this helps people out there that get the same issue!! | | |