Exchange 2007 or SBS 2008 suddenly stops receiving external emails. Internal and outgoing emails are working fine. Emails are not bouncing back. Exchange Management Console seems to be OK. Exchange stores mounted and all Exchange services running. This behaviour could be caused by a low space on one of the hard drives. Disk doesn’t have…

To avoid restarting server during working hours you easily schedule restart to be performed at night. Obviously the same can be applied to a workstation rather than server. Create a text file restart.txt with text:shutdown /r /c “Your message displayed before restart”If you want to shut down instead of restart, use this text instead:shutdown /s…

This article uses a particular Windows Event ID 10016 error caused by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on SBS Server 2008 as an example, but can be used to troubleshoot other 10016 (DCOM) errors. Event ID: 10016Level: ErrorDescription:The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} to…

If MS SQL database Recover Model is set to “FULL” and regular full backups are not performed databases log files (.LDF) can grow very large. If you are working with a production database make sure you know what you are doing as you may loose ability to restore your database to any point in time…

This article uses a specific MS SQL 2005 Service Pack 4 installation error as an example, but may help in troubleshooting other Microsoft and Windows Update problems. Installation of SQL server 2005 Service Pack 4 fails and Event ID 20 Error is recorded in Windows System Logs: Type: ErrorEvent ID: 20Description:Installation Failure: Windows failed to…

Normally when you run ntbackup logged on as “Administrator” backup logs are saved in “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data“If backup logs are not in the expected location check following: If you run ntbackup from the command line or a script make sure you include log option: /l:s (summary log) or /l:f (full log). If…

Sometimes it could be useful to have a text file listing all files on your server or in a particular directory. If content is relatively static this can be used to perform a quick file searches based on file names. Similar search using Windows search toll could take hours, whereas search inside a large text…

Exchange 2007 Autodiscover Service can automatically change Outlook 2010 “Exchange Proxy Settings” to incorrect parameters if Exchange Outlook Anywhere is not configured correctly.Even if you manually set correct details after restarting the Outlook changes get reverted back.This only affects computer in the domain. You have 3 options to fix this: Force settings via group policy…

If you need to move or copy a certificate from Windows IIS6 to Linux Apache server (or other device requiring .key and .crt formats) perform following steps: 1. Export IIS6 certificate into into .pfx formatOn Windows Server machine Start > Run MMC File > Add/Remove Snap-in Add > Certificates > Add > Computer Account >…

This guide helps to restore an Exchange 2007 mailbox to a test lab server on an isolated network and extract restored mailbox as a .pst file.Normally you can only restore Exchange within the same organisation. If you want to restore Exchange mailbox to a server on a completely different network you have to replicate your…

Statistics Get-MailboxStatistics -server <ServerName>Get a list of all mailboxes, number of items, Storage Limit Status and Last Logon Time Get-MailboxStatistics –server <ServerName> | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName,@{label=”TotalItemSize(MB)”;expression={$_.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB()}},ItemCount, storagelimitstatusGet the list of all mailboxes, sizes in MB, number of items and limit status. Sorted by size. Get-MailboxStatistics -server <ServerName> | sort -Property @{expression={$_.TotalDeletedItemSize.value.ToMB()}} -Descending…

There are a number of places to limit message size in Exchange 2007: 1. Organizational limits: Apply to all Exchange servers in the OrganizationEMC > Organization Configuration > Hub Transport > Global Settings tab > Transport Settings > Properties > General. 2. Receive Connector limit: Receive Connectors are only used to receive messagesEMC > Server…