123-reg auto renew SSL .crt certificate won't load in ISA Server, no key, can't export .pfx

We've got an Exchange Server 2003 as part of an SBS 2003 setup, just hanging in on its last couple of months before it gets upgraded - just before the July 2015 sunset on security updates. You best contact redleg.net if you haven't planned upgrading from Server 2003 yet.

The replacement Alpha SSL certificate came as a plain text email, to save as a .crt file and import. Loaded the MMC, added the Certificates option to manage the Local Computer certificate store, and easily imported into the Personal section. From there, head to IIS Manager > Default Website > Properties > Directory Security > Server Certificate and change to the updated certificate.

Easy enough, however on the SBS 2003 Premium, running ISA server as the firewall, you also need to update the certificate in the ISA Outlook web publishing rule too. Right-lick on the rule > Properties > Listener > Properties > Preferences > SSL > Select

But the new certificate doesn't appear on the list. Thats because it needs to be in PFX format, which also includes the private key. This comes from the original certificate request. If you try and export that certificate in PFX format its greyed out, because the private key is missing. There's a quick and easy way to fix the certificate, which doesn't involve exporting or trying to recombine the certificate and key with openssl (yes tried all that!)

Look at the new certificate details and find the serial number - should eb something like a 36 character hex number. Now start a CMD prompt and use the command
   certutil -repairstore my "serialno"

Then go back to ISA to change the certificate attached to the web publishing rule listener and your new certificate should be on the list.

(I also did a restart of IIS Admin service - not sure whether that was required or not - let me know in the comments below)

Lumia 625 bricked with red Nokia screen or won't turn on

A Nokia Lumia 625 failed to reload the system with the Windows Phone Recovery Tool 1.0.4 (released earlier in 2015 I think). The 625 had a Nokia screen initially but wouldn't respond to anything, or turn on, or recover using any of the Microsoft or Nokia tools. Completely bricked.

If connected to a computer it appeared as an unknown device QHUSB_DLOAD. I took it to Nokia Care and they couldn't do anything other send it back to be looked at - but I needed proof of purchase (even though it showed in their system as still under warranty - however it came from ebay)

The good news is that can now be recovered. The latest version of the Windows Phone Recovery Software is 2.1.1. Spotted the phone right away, warned to charge the battery above 25%, then reloaded the system. Only took 10-15 mins, and the phone is back! De-bricked. Un-bricked. Whatever the word is.

https://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/how-to/wp8/phones-and-hardware/recover-my-phone

Samsung SA450 (S24A450BW / LS24A450) monitor turning off or no picture

The Samsung SyncMaster SA450 24" LED monitor (aka S24A450BW or LS24A450) is a great bit of kit supporting a resolution of 1920x1200 with DVI or VGA. However it started playing up, sometimes working ok and then abruptly powering off, showing the flashing Analog/Digital symbol as it scans for a signal. Other times it won't show a picture as soon as turned on - ruling out some sort of overheating problem.

I was about to pull the back off the monitor and start looking for faulty capacitors, when I spotted a firmware upgrade on the Samsung website.
http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/consumer/computer-peripherals/monitors/commercial/LS24A450BWT/XK?subsubtype=sa450-led

You can run this Windows updater program to flash the firmware up to v1.1.7 - I did it successfully using Win7 64 bit and a VGA cable. Completely cleared up the no picture fault.

AVG CloudCare keeps prompting to Restart after Update

Seems like AVG Cloudcare with the AVG 2015 component (CloudCare version currently showing as v3.3.1) sometimes gets stuck on an update. It may just be for non-admin domain users, I haven't been able to confirm that for certain.

The user gets prompted every day for a Restart, which then nags hourly if they click postpone. Restarting and logging in as admin doesn't clear the problem -  it repeats again the following day.

Couple of options - the simple one is to go into CloudCare > Options > Advanced Settings > Update > Manage, then click the Delete Temporary Update Files. Reboot and you shouldn't be prompted again.

The more tedious option, if that doesn't fix the warning, is to uninstall and reinstall. After using the Uninstall from Control Panel > Programs and Features, do a reboot if required. Then run the AVG 2015 Remover program, that can be downloaded from AVG's utilities website here: http://www.avg.com/gb-en/utilities
Reboot, check there are no AVG folders left in C:\USERS\username\APPDATA or in Program Files or Program Files (x86) - and then reinstall. That definitely clears the problem !

At last! 1&1 SRV DNS records - with invalid characters warning when creating _autodiscover for Exchange

1and1 finally add SRV records to the DNS

I can't tell you how long I've wanted 1&1 to allow SRV records in the DNS editor - since Exchange 2007 ... and its 2015 now, must have been really really hard to implement ;-)

So login to 1and1 and go to the new Domain Centre, choose your domain and click Edit DNS Settings. At the bottom under 'TXT, SPF and SRV Records' click Add Record. It looks like this picture.

The standard advice is to create a record with this info:
   Service: _autodiscover
   Protocol: _tcp
   Port Number: 443
   Host: remote.yourdomain.com

However if you add _autodiscover you'll get an error ... This field contains invalid characters. The following characters are valid: 'a-Z', '0-9', '*', '-', '+'.

The trick is to remove the underscore at the start for both autodiscover and tcp. If you look at the preview at the bottom, 1and1 are automatically adding the underscore. 

Also note you need to click Add and then click Save, to create the record.

Reclaim lots of disk space from Microsoft Zune / Windows Phone .tmp files

The laptop just shouted about having low disk space, only 100MB remaining. So I started poking around to find out what I could free up - really didn't expect to discover that a big culprit was Microsoft Zune.

Zune was using around 15GB for its Transcoded Files Cache - consisting of 5000+ .tmp files. You can find this folder in
C:\USERS\username\APPDATA\LOCAL\MICROSOFT\ZUNE

Select All (Ctrl-A) to highlight them all, then Shift-Del to permanently delete (bypassing the Recycle Bin).

The files have come from a Windows Phone being connected and syncing media files between laptop and phone.

Shared printer keeps going offline after a few minutes on Windows Server

Sometimes its just the simple things ... AND you keep forgetting the fix. The copier company has just been and installed a shiny new Toshiba, looks loverly. Installed x86 / x64 drivers on the server, setup the printers, shared on the network, installed on a couple of PCs and watched as the printers promptly went offline again.

Restart the Print Spooler, come back online, wait a few minutes, and they're offline again. Aaargh.

Oh yes the fix - right-click on the server printer and choose Properties (or Printer Properties on newer versions of Windows Server) find the Ports tab, click Configure Port and

make sure SNMP is turned OFF

Draytek 2820 not connecting to Vigor 120 ADSL modem on WAN2, no response from server

Got a DrayTek Vigor 2820 router on the latest 3.3.7.5 firmware. We've got Plusnet connected using the ADSL WAN 1 port, which works fine. However WAN2 was connected to a Technicolor TG582n in ethernet bridged mode to ZEN broadband. WAN2 started dropping randomly and we couldn't pin down why.

We swapped a Draytek Vigor 120 ADSL modem (3.2.6.1) in place of the Technicolor. Line sync was ok, in fact faster than the TG582n, esp the uplink which doubled up from 512k to 1Mbps. Bonus! However it wouldn't connect from the 2820 router using the WAN2 PPPoE setup. This is a PPPoE to PPPoA bridged mode.

On the Online Status > Physical Connection you could see the PPP connection starting, but followed by a 'No response from the server' error.

Took a little while to identify - make sure the Vigor 120 modem has DHCP enabled on the LAN screen. Doh!

Windows 8.1 Hyper-V requires SLAT, is my Intel CPU supported?

I was having a bit of trouble tracking down if there was a suitable CPU upgrade for an old Core 2 E7300 that would support Hyper-V on Windows 8.1. The option to enable it in Programs and Features was greyed out. You an see the message here "Hyper-V cannot be installed: The processor does not have required virtualisation capabilities."

Turns out the CPU needs to support SLAT - Intel call their version, Extended Page Tables (EPT). Its not enough having Intel VT or VT-x or VT-d, it needs to be 'VT-x with EPT'.

Roughly speaking, you need an i3, i5, i7 or equivalent Xeon CPU for EPT support. None of the Core 2 CPUs had it present.

For a more definitive answer, you can bring up a full list of supported CPUs with this search of Intel's ARK library http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?s=t&ExtendedPageTables=true

Unable to send email from SBS 2008 Task Scheduler when Event Viewer Audit Failure, error 2147746321

I wanted an SBS 2008 server (which is essentially Windows Server 2008) to email me if there was a login failure recorded. So if someone types the wrong password, or more importantly, starts trying to guess a password, I'll get a notification.

The Event Viewer should let you attach a task to a particular event id, in this case Audit Failure Event ID 4625. Find one in the event viewer (using Filter Current Log > keywords > Audit Failure) then right-click and Attach Task.

Except no matter how many combinations of user/SYSTEM account, Run whether user is logged in or not, highest privileges and then messing with the from field and the smtp server (including a second receive connector on a different port), localhost vs ip vs 127.0.0.1 ... it just wouldn't send an email. I couldn't even see in the Transport Roles verbose logging what was happening. The only hint was in the Task properties under history which showed error 2147746321. That didn't Google to anything that fixed the problem.

So I gave up on that plan.

And decided to attach a script instead, dead simple, ran first time. So open notepad and paste this script in

Set objMail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
Set objConf = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
Set objFlds = objConf.Fields
objFlds.Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
objFlds.Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "SERVER1"
objFlds.Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25
objFlds.Update
objMail.Configuration = objConf
objMail.From = "administrator@acmecleaning.co.uk"
objMail.To = "support@redleg"
objMail.Subject = "Security audit failure (Acme Cleaning)"
objMail.TextBody = "Please check the security log on SERVER1 at Acme Cleaning."
objMail.Send
Set objFlds = Nothing
Set objConf = Nothing
Set objMail = Nothing

Save the file as "security-warning.vbs" into somewhere handy like c:\users\administrator and change the task action from send email to run a program, point it at that script.

Oh and you'll need to update the script with your server, from email address and to email address.

Note that the sending port is the default 25 in this example which doesn't allow internal smtp by default. You might want to create another Receive Connector in Exchange Management Console > Server Config > Hub Transport using another port, eg 25025 and allow anonymous internal email via that instead.