One of our guys was on site today installing a new HP M425 for a client. He unpacked the printer and everything worked great except for the scanning. All scanning was 100% black.
He rechecked the whole unit and there was no packing material blocking the scanner. Nothing left to do but call HP support.
HP support had him flash the firmware to the latest version and scanning began to work fine. Very very weird. I would never have guessed in a million years.
Friday, July 6, 2012
User Sending as Multiple Email Addresses
Many organizations want a single user to have multiple email addresses and would like the user to be able to select which email address to send as. In Exchange 2010 (and earlier versions) it's very easy to add multiple email addresses for a user. However, the sending is a problem.
When multiple email addresses have been configured for a user, only one email address can be set as the primary/Reply To address. The primary address is the From address when sending a message. The user cannot select an alternate From address from their list of addresses.
You can buy commercial software that enables this functionality (http://www.ivasoft.biz/choosefrom2007.shtml). However, for the cheap (ahem, cost sensitive) among us there is a workaround.
When multiple email addresses have been configured for a user, only one email address can be set as the primary/Reply To address. The primary address is the From address when sending a message. The user cannot select an alternate From address from their list of addresses.
You can buy commercial software that enables this functionality (http://www.ivasoft.biz/choosefrom2007.shtml). However, for the cheap (ahem, cost sensitive) among us there is a workaround.
- For any secondary address you want to assign to a user, create a distribution group with that address.
- Make the user the only member of that group.
- Assign the user Send As permission for the group.
Enable Remote Management for Windows 7
Windows 7 is more secure than Windows XP. That is a good thing. However, it's also annoying when you want to remotely manage a domain joined computer and it's not allowed by default.
Windows Firewall in Windows 7 does not allow remote management even on domain joined computers. You need to create the exceptions that allow remote management of Windows.
You generally want to:
A blog post (http://skatterbrainz.blogspot.ca/2009/08/enabling-windows-7-remote-management.html) by David Stein provides the details on how to do it. He lists the specific Group Policy settings to enable and configure. And if you are not familiar with the Group Policy Management Console, he also provides some detailed steps on how to use it.
Windows Firewall in Windows 7 does not allow remote management even on domain joined computers. You need to create the exceptions that allow remote management of Windows.
You generally want to:
- Allow ping. I'd like to see if the computer is up or not.
- Connect with Remote Desktop. It's nice to fix up desktop computers without going on site.
- Connect with Computer Management. Nice to see event logs remotely without logging on.
- Connect to the registry remotely. Nice to do reg edits without logging on locally and bothering the customer.
A blog post (http://skatterbrainz.blogspot.ca/2009/08/enabling-windows-7-remote-management.html) by David Stein provides the details on how to do it. He lists the specific Group Policy settings to enable and configure. And if you are not familiar with the Group Policy Management Console, he also provides some detailed steps on how to use it.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Installing SQL 2005 on Windows 2008 R2
As part of a performance test for an application at a client, we needed to setup a temporary server running Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2005. When you install SQL 2005, it indicates that IIS must be installed. Back in Windows Server 2003 this was easy because IIS was installed as a single lump. Starting in Windows Server 2008, IIS is installed as multiple role services. This makes it difficult to determine which role services are required.
Here is a list of the IIS 7 role services that must be installed for SQL 2005:
Here is a list of the IIS 7 role services that must be installed for SQL 2005:
- Common HTTP Features
- Static Content - Common HTTP Features
- Default Document
- HTTP Redirection
- Directory Browsing
- Application Development
- ASP.NET
- ISAPI Extension
- ISAPI Filters
- Security
- Windows Authentication
- Management Tools
- IIS Metabase
- IIS 6 WMI
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Free E-book about Windows Server 2012
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but Microsoft has made an e-book about Windows Server 2012 available free for download. You can get it here:
Friday, June 15, 2012
Sending Email from a PowerShell Script
As I move more batch jobs and scheduled tasks over to PowerShell, I've found that I often want to send some sort of status message when a script completes. The .NET Framework, which PowerShell uses, includes the Net.Mail.SMTPClient object that you can use to send email messages.
First you need to create a new instance of the object in a variable:
Then, you can send the message:
In most cases, you would use variables to define the addresses, subject, and body of the message.
Some potentially useful documentation:
First you need to create a new instance of the object in a variable:
$mail= New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient("IPorDNSofSmtpServer")
Then, you can send the message:
$mail.Send("FromAddress","Recipient1,Recipent2","Subject","Body")
In most cases, you would use variables to define the addresses, subject, and body of the message.
Some potentially useful documentation:
KB 2720211 Kills WSUS
Updates were performed on a client's WSUS 3.0 SP2 server this week and KB 2720211 killed WSUS. Here are the symptoms we saw:
The resolve is:
For a great detailed description of how to resolve this look for the post by chucker2 in the microsoft forum link:
Some others have reported that a registry key needed to be modified in order for the update to install properly. Or perhaps, this is just an easier fix than the above. See this link:
- WSUSDB in single user mode (done as part of the failed update process, but not undone when the update failed)
- Named pipes disabled (also I think done as part of the failed update process).
- MMC for WSUS fails with "MMC has detected an error in a snap-in"
The resolve is:
- Use SQL Server Configuration Manager to enable named pipes
- Use SQL Server Management Studio to change the database to MULTI_USER
- Stop the Windows Update service and World Wide Web Publishing service before connecting to allow you to use the single connection that is available.
- Copy some files manually from the update into their correct location. I'm not sure why but it appears on some systems this is not being done.
- Download and run WSUS-KB270211-x64.exe /extract to extract the files.
- Use a program capable of extracting CAB files (7 zip) to open PCW_CAB_SUS and copy the files DbCert, DbCertDll, and DbCertSql
- Rename those files to WSUSSignDb.cer, WSUSSignDb.dll, and WSUSSignDb.sql.
- Copy the cer and dll file to: C:\Windows\Sysmsi\ssee\mssql.22005\mssql\schemasig
- Copy the sql file to C:\Program Files\Update Services\Database
- Rerun the update
For a great detailed description of how to resolve this look for the post by chucker2 in the microsoft forum link:
Some others have reported that a registry key needed to be modified in order for the update to install properly. Or perhaps, this is just an easier fix than the above. See this link:
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