I had the third worst day of my IT career yesterday, and it wasn't even anything I had done, knew about or was even expecting.
I suppose the 2 or 3 things I learned from the experience and that is at the end of the day what it is all about are as follows;
1. Never ever trust the trustworthy - A KVM, brand new and out of the box, worked fine on another 3 connected machines caused a new server to hang on boot-up, it never got past the black Server 2003 splash screen.
2. SQL ain't easy - The server in question was hosting a VM machine with SQL on it, all set, configured, patched and ready. It was a temporary fix while their new funky DL580 comes in. Of course with the host machine hanging, SQL had to be installed onto a new machine, one of the other servers on site.
3. When all else around you goes to pants Exchange wants to join in - Exchange always the trustworthy, was obviously feeling left out from all of the attention the new server was getting so it decided to throw a few wobblies.
I suppose the important things again are the lessons learned and what I can take from it and carry forward so here are some of them
Recovering deleted emails from Outlook;
The obvious way, click on deleted items, click on tools, recover deleted items.
A second way, exmerge out the mailbox and import the pst file to another, possibly administrator account and try the following
locate the pst in an easy accessible location
From the command line type the following lines, it corrupts the pst enough for scanpst to run on it
DEBUG C:\fullpath_to_pst\OutlookFile.PST
- f 107 113 20
- q
then find scanpst.exe, it can be in a few places,
Office 2003 it will be in \program files\microsoft\office 12\scanpst
Office 2000 \Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033
I was told on lots of occasions not to use SA authentication is SQL as its an easy attack, SQL programmers don't use decent passwords. So I installed SQL using windows authentication thinking I was doing good. I generated a new SQLAdmin account and gave it all the permissions I though it would need, knowing I could remove any necessary permissions etc ( I made it an administrator, domain admin etc). But no a SA account was needed and yes they don't really use strong passwords do they.
So to change Authentication mode on a SQL 2005 back to mixed mode and using the SA account follow this helpful article from Microsoft.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188670.aspx
And now for a whole new day of new problems.
Ain't google spell checking great!
Friday 13 July 2007
Thursday 5 July 2007
Yahoo pictures
Yahoo have decided to pull their Yahoo pictures site and replace it with Flickr or something similar.
Now I'm not a photographer or a camera expert but it was cool having a site I could post pictures to and share with family etc.
Now I don't want to use flickr or any of their other options, so I have to pull all of my pictures individually off the yahoo site after them giving me software to upload as many pictures as I wanted in one go....it just seems a bit mad folks. Do you think I'm going to automatically just move to whom you suggest.
I can do the tours, and look at the pretty expert arranged pictures etc, but all I want is an easy interface to upload pictures, and a handy way to edit them and I don't see it on any of your suggestions... Lots of sites to log onto but no easy winner. So I'm going to pull them all and go else where. Thanks for storing them safely and allowing me to use the service, but thanks a bunch for the ease of getting them off.
Joe
Now I'm not a photographer or a camera expert but it was cool having a site I could post pictures to and share with family etc.
Now I don't want to use flickr or any of their other options, so I have to pull all of my pictures individually off the yahoo site after them giving me software to upload as many pictures as I wanted in one go....it just seems a bit mad folks. Do you think I'm going to automatically just move to whom you suggest.
I can do the tours, and look at the pretty expert arranged pictures etc, but all I want is an easy interface to upload pictures, and a handy way to edit them and I don't see it on any of your suggestions... Lots of sites to log onto but no easy winner. So I'm going to pull them all and go else where. Thanks for storing them safely and allowing me to use the service, but thanks a bunch for the ease of getting them off.
Joe
Wednesday 4 July 2007
IMFv1, Exchange SP2 and error 0070002
A customer wanted a free spam solution.
They read in an industry magazine that IMF would be the free spam solution.
They wanted IMF installed onto their Exchange Server as their Spam solution.
Their Exchange server had not been built to optimum specifications or availability. ( right....put your own English in here!)
They insisted we installed IMF, we advised a third party AV/Spam/ Greyware solution, it worked out at X per client or 27 by X for the company, we'd support it etc.
No....IMF all the way. So 13 chargeable hours later, and 2 hours every 2 weeks to make sure we hit the IMF update install window the client is now wondering why the trade magazine called it free!
For those stuck in the dilemma of IMFv1 and SP2 for exchange here are a few links I found.
Unbelievably or otherwise you need to uninstall IMFv1 before you install SP2 for exchange.
Now IMFv1 can give you trouble to uninstall so you actually need to install it again and uninstall it, but MS pulled it from the download sites!
So what now Joe?
Copy of IMFv1 download.
http://www.dehning.com/download/updates/Exchange%202003/ExchangeIMF.MSI
If your sure you have IMFv1 Installed but can't find it in add/remove programs, make sure updates is ticked, try this in the run window;
MsiExec.exe /X{DCE4D1BC-6E15-433F-99FE-D7F7A2FDC0FF}
There are various regedits and hacks but they didn't work for me so I haven't posted them.
Then go ahead and try SP2.
Long story short, the client would have been better off paying for the Third party offering we were supporting, as opposed to us trying, and I mean trying to get a free spam solution working and re-configure a god awful piece of high end AV software by a large software company with dreadful Tech Support.
Joe.
They read in an industry magazine that IMF would be the free spam solution.
They wanted IMF installed onto their Exchange Server as their Spam solution.
Their Exchange server had not been built to optimum specifications or availability. ( right....put your own English in here!)
They insisted we installed IMF, we advised a third party AV/Spam/ Greyware solution, it worked out at X per client or 27 by X for the company, we'd support it etc.
No....IMF all the way. So 13 chargeable hours later, and 2 hours every 2 weeks to make sure we hit the IMF update install window the client is now wondering why the trade magazine called it free!
For those stuck in the dilemma of IMFv1 and SP2 for exchange here are a few links I found.
Unbelievably or otherwise you need to uninstall IMFv1 before you install SP2 for exchange.
Now IMFv1 can give you trouble to uninstall so you actually need to install it again and uninstall it, but MS pulled it from the download sites!
So what now Joe?
Copy of IMFv1 download.
http://www.dehning.com/download/updates/Exchange%202003/ExchangeIMF.MSI
If your sure you have IMFv1 Installed but can't find it in add/remove programs, make sure updates is ticked, try this in the run window;
MsiExec.exe /X{DCE4D1BC-6E15-433F-99FE-D7F7A2FDC0FF}
There are various regedits and hacks but they didn't work for me so I haven't posted them.
Then go ahead and try SP2.
Long story short, the client would have been better off paying for the Third party offering we were supporting, as opposed to us trying, and I mean trying to get a free spam solution working and re-configure a god awful piece of high end AV software by a large software company with dreadful Tech Support.
Joe.
New Family addition
I was wandering thru different people blogs and got extremely surprised by a quote I saw about myself......I aint there yet but hopefully someday I will.
I'm very lucky to have a collection of online, on the phone and at the bar mates who are the real source of info as all I do is re-iterate it all back to those who don't know yet.
Anyway, IT is starting to take a back seat as my family and I start making the necessary plans to welcome the latest addition to the family. Hopeful as much joy will be gotten as from the previous incarnation, and it will need as much care and attention as the last.
All things going well, a public display will occur around September and and that stage all of Europe will know about it....so hats off to the imminent arrival of my new iPhone, oh and a new baby as well.
Joe
I'm very lucky to have a collection of online, on the phone and at the bar mates who are the real source of info as all I do is re-iterate it all back to those who don't know yet.
Anyway, IT is starting to take a back seat as my family and I start making the necessary plans to welcome the latest addition to the family. Hopeful as much joy will be gotten as from the previous incarnation, and it will need as much care and attention as the last.
All things going well, a public display will occur around September and and that stage all of Europe will know about it....so hats off to the imminent arrival of my new iPhone, oh and a new baby as well.
Joe
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