Fixing a Small Business Server 2008 broken by updates

By tim, on January 27th, 2012 Follow tim on Twitter

I had a call last night from a small business whose email no longer worked. They had applied updates to the server but Exchange had failed to restart.

Looking at the services it was easy to see why. All the Exchange services and certain others including the IIS web server were set to disabled:

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ITWriting.com awards 2011: ten key happenings, from Nokia’s burning platform to HP’s nightmare year

By tim, on December 29th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

2011 felt like a pivotal year in technology. What was pivoting? Well, users are pivoting away from networks and PCs and towards cloud and devices. The obvious loser is Microsoft, which owns PCs and networks but is a distant follower in devices and has mixed prospects in the cloud. Winners include Apple, Google, Amazon,

…continue reading ITWriting.com awards 2011: ten key happenings, from Nokia’s burning platform to HP’s nightmare year

Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 with Office 365 migration wizard and retro Outlook Mini

By tim, on December 6th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has released Exchange 2010 SP2, which I have successfully installed on my small system.

There is a description of what’s new here. The most notable features are the Hybrid Configuration Wizard for setting up co-existence between on-premise Exchange and Office 365, and Outlook Mini for low-end phones with basic browsers.

A hybrid

…continue reading Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 with Office 365 migration wizard and retro Outlook Mini

Disappearing items in Outlook and Exchange

By tim, on March 20th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

I came across what looks to me like an unusual bug, most likely in Microsoft Outlook. Background: I have used the Notes folder in my Exchange mailbox for all sorts of information going back several years. This morning, I looked at the folder and found it empty, except for one solitary item. Normally there

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Microsoft Exchange 2010 annoyance: certificate wizard incompatible with certificate services

By tim, on December 31st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve used the holiday break to do some testing on Exchange 2010. I have a virtual network which includes a machine running Microsoft’s Certificate Services. The wizard generates a .req file which you can submit to a certification authority. In my case I submitted to my own certificate server using the certreq command. Here’s

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Exchange 2007: ESEUTIL beats the wizard

By tim, on May 6th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Today I was asked to help find missing email in Small Business Server 2008, in other words Exchange 2007. Somehow, thousands of emails had disappeared from a user’s mailbox. They were there a couple of days earlier, so we restored a backup. The procedure is nicely explained by John Bay. You restore the Exchange

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The mystery of the slow Exchange 2007: when hard-coded values come back to haunt you

By tim, on January 26th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Following a migration from Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 to SBS 2008 users were complaining that Exchange was slower than before in some scenarios. How could this be? The new machine had 64-bit goodness and far more RAM than before.

I checked out the machine’s performance and noticed something odd. Store.exe, the Exchange database,

…continue reading The mystery of the slow Exchange 2007: when hard-coded values come back to haunt you

A year of blogging: another crazy year in tech

By tim, on December 31st, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

At this time of year I allow myself a little introspection. Why do I write this blog? In part because I enjoy it; in part because it lets me write what I want to write, rather than what someone will commission; in part because I need to be visible on the Internet as an

…continue reading A year of blogging: another crazy year in tech

Los Angeles chooses Google over Exchange for email – who will follow?

By tim, on October 29th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

When the city council of Los Angeles needed to replace its Novell email system, it looked at two main options. One was Microsoft Exchange, the other Google Apps; and Google won the deal.

There is one, fascinating, caveat. According to David Sarno at LA Times:

The contract was approved pending an amendment that would

…continue reading Los Angeles chooses Google over Exchange for email – who will follow?

Microsoft will document the Outlook file format; users would rather it just worked better

By tim, on October 26th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft’s Paul Lorimer, Group Manager for Microsoft Office Interoperability, has announced that the .pst file format will be published:

In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow

…continue reading Microsoft will document the Outlook file format; users would rather it just worked better

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