Set NTP Server in Windows

Using an NTP server is the only way to keep your clock on your computer/server in correct time - bios clocks always seem so unreliable these days. Since I always forget the command to change/set the ntp server in Windows i thought i'd write it down:

net time /setsntp:ns1.server.com && net stop w32time && net start w32time

This command does three things in one - sets the ntp server address (change this to the appropriate one) - then restarts the Windows Time service. The '&&' characters enable you to execute multiple commands one one line.

If using Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server you'll see the NTP service synchronising in the event logs. If you don't have an NTP server and want one, do a Google for Public NTP servers and you'll come up with one you can use.

Outlook 2003 does not close properly

An issue arose where one user tried to close outlook, but all that happened was that Outlook hid away and the system tray icon for Outlook was still available, although would not work. He could re-open Outlook by hitting the Outlook icon, but Outlook came up straight away, proving it wasn't closed (this was re-enforced by outlook.exe still running in the processes tab of Task Manager'). The only way to completely close Outlook was to end the Oulook.exe process via task manager.

After reading other posts, a lot of people found PDA software and WinFax plugins to be the problem, but neither of these existed on our system. The add-in that did cause a problem was a VOIP soft phone one. Getting rid of this solved the problem - Outlook closed properly - bear in mind you must close outlook first by the End Process routine after disabling the add-in, then re-open Outlook to be able to close it properly again - bit of a mouthful that one!

Hope others find this useful.

WM5 Activesync Problems 80072f17

Had to set up a Vodafone WM5 smartphone the other day with ActiveSync which was giving me errors due to the fact our SSL certificate was self-signed. The error I was getting initally was:

"The certificate on the server is invalid. contact you exchange server
administrator or isp to install a valid certificate on the server."

After a fair bit of Googling I found that everyone seemed to be fixing the problem by adding the Root certificate to the WM device. I attempted to add the certificate to the device by exporting the certificate from the front-end exchange servers that we used, then importing it to the WM5 smartphone, but no luck. The certificate was shown to be installed, but still ActiveSync would not work.

I was able to navigate to Outlook Web Access without problem and the page did not confront me with a security warning, so I knew I was on the right track and the certificate was installed, but no joy.

After lots of messing around I ended up deleting the certificates I'd installed from the phone (in the end i tried installing multiple ones from the CA and front-end exchange servers, rebooting and added them in again, this time trying one at a time to see if there was some problem with one of those - I tested by going to Outlook Web Access again.

After much testing I realised the problem was to do with the certificate. I'd exported one from the front-end exchange servers (as i'd read on numerous ther posts), but what I actually needed to do to get this to work was export the certificate from the CA itself. Once this was installed on its own (with other certificates installed I got the error: 80072f17), Outlook Web Access worked fine (as before), but this time ActiveSync worked without a hitch!!!

I realise now the mistake I made at the beginning - having exported the wrong certificate, but only followed other posts i'd read before had told me. Anyway, if you're having this problem, try what i did and see.

Basic JBoss Deployments

This is more of a note for me to remember, but if you're doing a standard JBoss deployement (i.e. just deploying a general application), delete the follwoing before deploying the new app:

jboss\server\default\data
jboss\server\default\log
jboss\server\default\tmp
jboss\server\default\work

(this assume's you're running the server in default mode).

Like i say, more of a reminder for myself than anything, but if your JBoss app isn't deploying properly, remember to clear these first, unless explicitly told not to.

Search Exchange for Email Addresses

This foxed me for ages! How to search if an email address already exists in Exchange. I tried going through Active Directory and various search options, but no joy. Then after a while, the penny finally dropped! Stick the email address in Outlook (Compose a New Message and stick address in 'From' field) and hit 'Check Name'. If the email address is already assigned to somebody or a distribution list, the name will pop up straight away!

This is a simple one, but still might help someone out there who doesn't know!

Useful VI Commands

This is an ongoing post of little things that can help so much when using the Linux editor VI:

When vi'ing a file try the following:

Shift+G - go to end of file
: - go to line number n
:i - insert
:A - insert at end of line
cw - while in insert mode - change word (deletes word)
y - cut the n number of lines blow the cursor
p - paste below line
P - past above line

If you ever get lost in VI or want to get out of Insert mode, hit Esc.

As you may realise i'm no linux engineer, but these small commands have helped me save a lot of time when editing linux configs etc.

More to come soon...

Microsoft Communicator Error - The current machine is not in the list of internal servers - 0xC3E92047

I recently upgraded a number of users' sign-in email addresses on LCS to a different domain name (this wasn't actually another AD domain, just a different sign-in email address). Upon restarting the LCS service I got the following error:

'The current machine is not in the list of internal servers. This may cause the server to have interoperability issues.'

LCS had been working fine up until I changed approx 60+ users' sign-in names from @domain1.com to @domain2.com. I shut both the LCS Service and the Archiving Service down before doing
this, but on trying to restart the service I got the error above. I had the correct domains listed in the forest, so domain1.com and domain2.com were there. I tested a few users being changed over to this new sign-in name before starting and all worked fine.

The microsoft knowledge base article for this error (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896557/ ) says to check the
dns suffix on the server. In my case this is corrcect - the server itself is running fine. DNS resolved to the correct addresses, the server could ping the domain controllers and had full access to them - no firewalls in between. I couldn't have attempted to change the dns suffix of the server (even though it is correct) as it was a Certificate Authority and hosted many other applications, which all were working fine.

I tried running dcdiag/netdiag (i was getting nowhere, so wondered if DNS was having issues etc) but all come back completely fine.

In the end, it turned out for whatever reason I had to Deactivate then Reactive the LCS server! All worked fine after that!

I've no idea why this happened or what made the problem occur - i'd tested migrating a few users to the new sign-in address to ensue it worked, before changing everyone's, but either way the problem occured. I'm guessing a bug with LCS?

Communicator Login Problems

Throught my time working with Microsoft Communicator 2005 I've had a number of issues - some realtively easy to fix, some creating errors that even Microsoft don't have a solution for. It you get any of the following errors, try these solutions:

1. Can't login to Comunicator - I've had this problem whereby a user authenticating on to domain, on a computer which is not actually a member of that domain, cannot login periodically. No connectivity problems, no firewalls in the way, just would not log in.

The way I found to fix it was to logout of Communicator and navigate to the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator]

Navigate to the key called:

"UserMicrosoft RTC Instant Messaging"=" "

now, delete the domain\username part of the key.

I know what you're thinking - it asks me for this anyway, so why bother deleting this part of the key? That I can't answer - apart from guessing that the security token becomes invalid after a certain amout of time possibly, but either way this works for me on that certain computer ever time i get a login error.

Hope that helps somebody out there...

DVD Drive Crashes Computer

Had a problem once where a brand new DVD Writer caused a computer to crash/freeze upon trying to play a DVD. Had all the hallmarks of IRQ/Hardware problems. I updated bios/drivers etc, but no joy. Rattled my brain to thing of anything else, then thought, why not, instead of using BSPlayer lets try Power DVD - always comes with useful codecs and generaly sorts outs problems. That was it! The pc had never played DVDs before and Media Player didn't seem to even try and download the codec! If you're having problems with a DVD drive, give that a go - simple solution to a painful problem!

Really Useful Apps

In day to day use, i find the following Apps really, really useful:

WinSCP - Transfer files from Linux servers to Windows boxes really easily
Tail - Yes, for Windows!
Active Ports
Smart FTP
Winamp
CleanUp - Wicked program for cleaning up temp files!
PFE - Programmers File Editor
Daemon Tools - View ISO's like another drive
Putty
Ethereal
Notepad

Will try to post links to files soon...

Welcome!

Here i hope to post solutions to problems i find along the way with my job as a Systems Engineer! Not the most eventful job in the world, but always throws up problems that people, including myself, need answers to. So you never know, if you haven't found your answer in Google, you may well just stumble across it here. If nothing else this place will help me to remember how to fix things!