Uninstall Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Rollup 8 requires msexchange.msi

Having been caught with an SBS 2011 server that had the Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 Rollup 8 loaded, just before Microsoft withdrew that update. Apparently it caused connection problems with Outlook clients, although we had no reported issues.

Before you start make sure you've downloaded Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 and run it, so that its unpacked in a handy directory.

Going into Control Panel > Programs > View Installed Updates, you should see Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 7 and Rollup 8.

Select and uninstall Rollup 8. It takes a while to complete but will prompt for the location of msexchange.msi. This is actually the original  SP3 installer, not anything to do with RU7 which is what you'd expect. So when it prompts, browse to the SP3 directory mentioned above, where you already unpacked the files, and choose that msi file.

The RU8 will uninstall and appear to leave RU7 on the updates list, however in reality your Exchange server is now all the way back at SP3 with no Rollups at all.

Reinstall Exchange 2010 SP3 RU7 to bring it back up to date - and wait for MS to reissue RU8.

Bad week for faulty updates!

Offline Files error - 0x80070718 Not enough quota is available to process this command

I was copying files from an old PC to a Win7 64 bit laptop for a client with an SBS2011 server. The laptop was at home, offline, when it started warning about not being able to copy any more files - to be fair there were 20GB of photos involved.

Those laptops are setup to use Offline Files, so the Documents folder is available away from the office. Sounds an easy one, the SBS2011 server has a 2GB file quota for users by default. I checked it was turned off ok, then connected via VPN, tried another copy, still no luck. Double-checked that setting, turned it on and off, again no luck. Had to be something else - not as obvious unfortunately.

Tracked it down to a local limit on the laptop - the offline files disk usage limit was too low. Look in Control Panel > Sync Center > Offline Files > Manage Offline Files > Disk Usage > Change Limits

A more useful error message would have saved a bit of time there.

Intel NUC / Ubuntu 14.04 Rise Vision info display needs to turn off as soon as power button pressed

We've got an Intel NUC, one of the DN2820FYK kits - except its really a DN2830 - we use with the Rise Vision platform to run an information display in a reception area. Very nice bit of kit, boots in no time with Ubuntu 14.04 and a Kingston V300 SSD.

(As an aside, we did test with a Raspberry Pi, but it was just too slow. We've got 4 dynamic elements on the screen plus time, date, logo, weather and unfortunately the Pi just kept getting stuck with 100% cpu)

However we need it to shutdown right away if staff press the power button, not prompt with the confirmation dialog. Thanks to maketecheasier we found the following terminal command to sort that:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session suppress-logout-restart-shutdown true

Press the NUC power button and it will be down in under 5s !

iPad Kindle 'Tap to Retry' unable to download books and descriptions - caused by Norton ConnectSafe

On a home broadband connection one simple way to keep the kids away from dodgy websites - pornographic or security - is to use Norton ConnectSafe. Its a free service and just requires a small change in setup on your internet router. Essentially you use their DNS server settings so if a computer tries to connect to a website with suspicious content, you get redirected to Norton's safe page.

Just had reports in the past couple of weeks of a Kindle device failing to download books and descriptions and reporting that the WiFi wasn't working properly. Then the iPad Kindle app stopped downloading books, just reporting 'Tap to Retry'.

Both worked ok on the WiFi shared off my mobile phone, so it had to be the home broadband setup that was at fault.

The fix was to update the router with the latest DNS server settings from Norton ConnectSafe. So the old settings were 198.153.192.50 and 198.153.194.50.

The latest DNS servers that Norton recommend to use are:
     199.85.126.20
     199.85.127.20

As soon as this was updated and the Kindle/iPad network connections renewed (or device rebooted) then they started downloading again. Success!

Just to note there are additional DNS server changes, depending upon what level of filtering you require ...
     199.85.126.10  (was 198.153.192.40)
     199.85.127.10  (was 198.153.194.40)
     199.85.126.30  (was 198.153.192.60)
     199.85.127.30  (was 198.153.194.60)

More details and instructions can be found on the Norton ConnectSafe Configure Router page.

Run as Administrator turned on, but greyed out - can't remove

Run this program as an administrator
is greyed out and can't be changed

On a Windows 7 Pro PC, in the program compatibility properties for a document management program we use (ie. right-click > Properties > Compatibility) there was a ticked 'Run as Administrator' option causing problems with the program failing to load. Issue was it was greyed out so couldn't be removed, even after clicking Change for All Users and entering the administrator password.

Answer was to start up Regedit and track this key down:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER

    Software

        Microsoft

            Windows NT

                CurrentVersion

                    AppCompatFlags

                        Layers

There was an entry for the exe, specifying RUNASADMIN WINXPSP3 - so we just deleted the RUNASADMIN term and all was fine again :-)

Another obscure Trustwave PCI scan fail - SBS 2011 fails CVE-2010-3332 / MS10-070, vulnerability in ASP.NET Could Allow Information Disclosure

After clearing up the SharePoint issues, there was just one remaining failure issue in the Trustwave PCI scan of an SBS 2011 server.

The fix turned out to be running the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool from Aaron Stebner at Microsoft, and removing .NET 1.0 and 1.1.

There's some more detailed discussion over at Technet

SharePoint 2010 on SBS 2011 failing Trustwave PCI scan (aka WSS_Search SPSearchDatabase Database is too old)

[ bonus points - that's got to be the biggest post title yet :-) ]

An SBS 2011 server, all patched up with the latest Microsoft Update fixes failed a Trustwave PCI security scan. When we looked at the detail most of the fail points were around SharePoint vulnerabilities.

Looking at the SharePoint Central Administration console, the Health Analyzer was throwing up warnings about out of date databases and upgrades required. they're no entirely straightforward because there's a difference between content databases and other databases.

With SharePoint updates you do need to run the upgrade tool sometimes after Microsoft Updates have been loaded, to get the database to upgrade too.

Start a Command Shell with administrative rights (or the SharePoint PowerShell) and run this command;
PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

That cleared all but one of the Health Analyzer warnings for us. The remaining one was the "WSS_Search SPSearchDatabase Database is too old" or more strictly, WSS_Search_servername. We had trouble tracking down that database GUID to issue a PS upgrade, as mentioned on the Technet forum.

Restarting services and rebooting didn't seem to clear either. The only info we could Google was the upgrade command above. In the end, having run the command repeatedly, the database upgraded and the warning cleared. It appeared to take 2-3 repeats of that command before WSS_Search was up to date.

Let you know about the PCI re-scan, I've just requested it ...

Sage Payroll keeps prompting with an older update

Sage Payroll 2014-15 v20

Every time we exit from Sage Payroll 2014-2015 tax year - version 20.02.203 - it prompts to install an older v20.01 update 1. Choose ok and nothing happens, or leave it (and nothing happens!) but you'll get prompted again for the update next time round.

Tried manually loading the update from a download - no luck - tried using Run as admin - no luck - tried editing the version number in the PayrollVersion.dat file - no luck.

So after 15 mins on hold to sage support, here's the trick ...

Look in C:\Programdata\sage\SBD Software Updates
and delete the files
   softwareupdates.dat
   SoftwareUpdateSettings.dat

Restart Sage Payroll and no more prompts, yaaay!

Can't Empty Deleted Items in Outlook, until synchronization with server is complete

Using Outlook with Microsoft Exchange. It looks like a damaged email in Outlook, stuck in the Deleted Items offline folder, which then fails to complete the Empty Deleted Items action. You get this error message:

"Outlook is synchronizing local changes made to items in this folder. You cannot remove this folder until the synchronization with the server is complete."

You can remove the problem item by right-clicking on the Deleted Items folder, then Properties, and choosing the Clear Offline Items button. Press F9 to run a sync

Adding mutiple DNS servers with "netsh int ip" batch command in Windows 8.1

I needed a CMD batch file to change DNS servers for some testing but couldn't find the correct syntax to add more than one DNS server, eg set a primary DNS and a secondary DNS.

The basic command (don't forget to use an elevated Run As Administrator command shell or batch file) is
   netsh int ip set dns "Ethernet connection" static 8.8.8.8

I'm sure on older versions of Windows you could specify multiple servers in one lines using a space or string or comma (or something like that) - maybe I made that up. I googled and tracked down an index option which let you specify a secondary dns server - but not in Windows 8.1 unfortunately. That option is no longer recognised.

Trick in the end was to use set for the primary and add for the secondary, eg.
   netsh int ip set dns "Ethernet connection" static 8.8.8.8 primary
   netsh int ip add dns "Ethernet connection" 8.8.4.4

HTH