In the past when renaming or re-creating mailboxes in Exchange I’ve had issues where the Outlook cached entry for the user no longer works when internal users send mail to the specified mailbox. This is because of our dual Exchange environment running mixed versions of Exchange. The original mailbox was created under Exchange 2003 and ultimately moved to Exchange 2007, but preserving the Exchange 2003 Mailbox reference for X500. When a mailbox is re-created or the alias is changed, it can break these cached entries in Outlook. Today, I discovered a way to work around this issue from this article.

In the future if I need to change alias (due to name change) or if there are problems resulting in a need to re-create the mailbox, the steps in the article can be used to avoid having mail delivery problems for the affected user.

• The listed steps will allow the cached Outlook entries to properly resolve the user mailbox. No user action is required to make this work.
• You can find the proper alias for the user in an NDR message or by going to the cached entry in outlook and viewing its properties. It will be a string in one of the values displayed on the properties. (Note, this only works before you make the changes above).
• The updated string for the Exchange 2007 environment is automatically added to re-created mailboxes in X400 form. The old pointers can be added using X500.
• This issue only affects mail sent from internal clients using the cached entry in Outlook, all SMTP mail flow and external mail will continue to flow to the user uninterrupted regardless of this issue.

I am not promoting piracy, but I ran into a nasty little problem when I tried to activate Windows 7 on my home computer.  Maybe this post will help others like me who can’t get help anywhere else. 

In anticipation of obtaining my Windows 7 Pro upgrades (which I ordered in July on the pre-order 50% off sale) I installed Windows 7 Pro using a clean install without entering a product key for activation on two of my computers.  My laptop and my main home computer.  Both computers were clean installs on either a new hard drive or a new partition.  On my laptop I resized my partitions and installed Windows 7 on a new partition separate from Windows Vista.  So now its in a dual boot configuration with Windows Vista and Windows 7. 

On Thursday, I got my upgrade product keys from the Microsoft store and went to activate my computers.  On my laptop the activation was successful wtihout a problem.  Then I went to activate my home computer and got the error telling me that I can’t use an upgrade product key to activate a clean install of Windows 7.  So now I am left with a fully loaded PC running Windows 7 with only 10 days left to activate before I either have to re-arm or enter a new product key.  It takes hours to backup and restore the data on this PC, its my wife’s main computer and we have tons of stuff to backup and move around.  I’d pay a fee to avoid having to do this! 

The home computer was running Widnows Vista 32-bit Home premium edition.  It got upgraded to Windows 7 Pro 64-bit using a clean install method.  A while after I had installed Windows 7, I decided to cleanup the old hard drive that had the Windows Vista install on it because I wouldn’t need it anymore.  So I can’t even go back to Vista without having to do a clean install of Vista first which is something I want to avoid.  But from my understanding you can’t upgrade a 32-bit OS to the 64-bit version, so I have to do a clean install anyway.  But now that I’ve wiped out the hard drive that had Vista on it, so the activation wizard can’t see the old OS and won’t let me use my upgrade key.  I heard hints in various forums that the activation wizard looks for partitions with an upgradable OS on it. 

On my laptop, I still have the partition with Activated Windows Vista home premium 64-bit because of the dual boot setup, so I think thats why the activation wizard let me activate my laptop without a problem.  So what can we do in a situation like this?  Call Microsoft, take a huge risk and investigate non legit options?  

I had thought about trying to run the Retail upgrade install of Windows 7 on my home PC and use my upgrade key for activation.  The reason I had hope that this might work is because my home PC was loaded using the RTM Windows 7, and the download I got from Microsoft was the official retail media, so there is a very small chance it may have let me do another upgrade using my upgrade key and then possibly activate successfully.  My other thought was to install windows Vista on a spare hard drive and just leave it in my PC when booted up to Windows 7 and see if the Windows 7 Activation wizard will recognize a valid copy of Windows Vista and let me activate using my upgrade key. 

I was getting desperate since it could easily take two days to reload my home computer and go through all the trouble to get Windows 7 running again!  This is such a pain!  It shouldn’t be this hard for legit customers to use Microsoft software!!!

Ok, now that the rant is over, let me tell you how to get around this problem and get your Windows 7 systems activated.  This is actually very easy and only took a few minutes.  To my knowledge there is nothing underhanded or risky about this procedure.  Its also not well documented, it took me two days of google research and massive searches to find the information that helped me. 

Thanks to Winsupersite.com community for this information!

After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You’ll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).  Install the updates and reboot if necessary before proceeding.

Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:

HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

Change MediaBootInstall from “1″ to “0″.

Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose “Run as administrator.” Handle the UAC prompt.

In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm

Then click OK, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows wizard (go to system properties and click the activate windows link at the bottom of the window), type in your upgrade product key and activate windows.  It should activate successfully and you are now finished!  Congratulations on saving yourself hours (or days in my case) of wasted time jumping through hoops trying to get your genuine Windows 7 installation activated!

Yesterday, I upgraded my work PC to Windows 7 professional.  I wanted to give the upgrade a try and see how it would go, but normally I prefer to do clean installs.  The upgrade process took about 2-3 hours but did retain all my applications and most settings.  I did have to remove some HP software that came with the PC, but overall it wasn’t too bad.  I had some additional trouble with Ultramon that caused some errors and weird behavior with the taskbar.  Here are some observations so far:

1. The taskbar is taller and takes up more screen real estate.  This isn’t necessarily bad, but takes some getting used to.  It makes the icons look smaller. 
2.  The quick launch bar has been transformed into something different, mabye better, not sure yet.  I was dismayed to find out that the upgrade had wiped out my quick launch folder completely, all my pre-arranged shortcuts were just gone!  I found a way to work around this by creating a new quick launch folder manually and moving shortcuts that I wanted in the list.  I wish I had backed up my quick launch folder before the upgrade! 
3. The transparency is nice, but at times a little weird.  Since the top inch or so of many apps is now transparent, it seems like your apps are not maximized or as if there is a big gap at the top of the screen. 
4.  I think its cute how the new network connection icon in the task bar looks like it has a pitch fork in it. 
5.  I like the new start menu, specifically the ability to expand options for programs such as RDP.  Now when you go to RDP in the start menu, it gives you an expandable list of recent connections, which I think is nice, even though I use mRemote to organize my RDP connections.  
6. Performance seems good, the PC boots up pretty fast especially considering it was an upgrade install. 

The official upgrades for my home computers will be available in a few weeks, so I’ll post back later on with more observations.

I came across FuseMail in my search for an outbound SMTP relay solution and really like its many features and small business focus.  For home users who need more than just pop mail, this would also be a great solution.  Check out their website for more information.  For only $2 per mailbox per month, its a great deal and feature rich.

***Please read update in Red at the bottom of this post***

Immagine you are in the I.T. Department at a larger company.  Now immagine that your users get a lot of e-mail, seriously, thousands a day – mostly because they are on distribution lists for the company which receive a lot of mail.  Now picture these users traveling internationally and wanting to save on roaming data charges by cutting down on the volume of e-mail they receive on their mobile phones, or simply want to go on vacation and not have to deal with the burden of managing their e-mail while they are out of the office.  On top of all this (by this time you may really working your immagination) the users want you to take them off of a huge number of lists at weird times of the day such as 10pm.  In addition they want to be re-added at 5am the following week.

How do you handle the above scenario?  What would you do?  Normally the users I deal with may just accept that they have to stick with normal business hours for list changes such as I described above.  Or perhaps they will rely on international I.T. Support to do it for them due to the convenience of time zone differences.

What if there were a better way to deal with this situation?  Would you be interested?  What if there was a way to batch and automate the addition or removal of Distribution Lists on a user’s account?

I found myself in exactly the same situation I described above.  I spent some time researching my options and trying to find a good solution; something that would let me create batch files which could be setup as a scheduled task in widnows.  Something that could add and remove DLs from a user’s profile at any time of the day or night without me having to pyhsically make the change myself.  To my surprise, I couldn’t find anything out there that would do the job.  Thats when I decided to head over to vbforums.com and ask for some help creating an application or script that would do what I needed.

With gracious work by member chris128, a new application was created that completely takes care of the above scenarios.  Chris created an application called DLManager in VB.NET, and I performed real world testing and evaluation of the program.  This is a very useful application that goes even beyond Distribution List management into the realm of security groups as well.  Which means you could batch, automate and schedule Active Directory security group membership changes as well.

Application Information:

* Compiled VB.NET executable meant to be called from the command line
* Requires the .NET framework 2.0 or higher in order to function
* Can be run in a DOS batch file
* Can be scheduled via batch script or other automation tool (see http://www.networkautomation.com)
* Very small footprint at less than 30kb in size
* .ini config file to hangle AD domain configuration information

Command line syntax: dlmanage.exe [add/remove] [target AD username]  [DLNAME] (OPTIONAL): adminusername adminpassword

Example for admin user: dlmanage remove jdoe “Information Technology”

Example for non-admin user: dlmanage remove jdoe “Information Technology Administrator AdminPasswordHere

NOTE: Quotes are only needed for DL or security groups that have spaces in the name.

(this download is free software, and full credit goes to the author, see author’s site for more details)

************* IMPORTANT***************
Chris has released an updated version that is easier to use, has new featuers like better error handling, primary group awareness and no more config.ini file.  I’ve updated the download link to give you the newer version of the program.  For complete details, please see Chris’s Site at http://www.cjwdev.co.uk/Software/DLManage/Info.html

Updated program syntax example: DLMAnage Add username group1,group2,group3

For those of you who read my blog or subscribe to my RSS feed, you should know that I have moved to a new domain. All my old links/posts/pages, etc should all still work, but you may see some strange issues now and then until you update your bookmarks and or RSS feed link. My new domain name is joechurch.com and my blog link is now located at www.joechurch.com/blog

I will be putting up a new site at the root of joechurch.com sometime soon, but for now the only thing that works is my blog link.

It was quite a challenge to move domains with my blog, as I had lots of plugin issues and link problems. I ended up starting from scratch and re-installing wordpress and all my plugins manually. I used a wordpress export to move everything over which worked great except that I lost of blogroll links. I was able to use the wayback machine at www.archive.org to get the links I used to have and the names I gave them. So for now, the blog is fully moved over and working great.

Recently I had a small battle with itunes on my laptop.  I have a fairly large music and podcast library and anytime I have trouble with itunes it makes me nervous.  Fortunately the issue wasn’t as bad as I thought.  It all started when I tried to install itunes 7.7.1.1 through the apple updater software.  Half way through the install of the new update, I receive a registry error saying I didn’t have access to the “pcast” key.  This key is under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.  The problem was that I didn’t have permissions to access they key, and wasn’t the owner.  I am ad administrator on my laptop so this was strange and it had always worked ok before.  After I received this error itunes rolled back to a semi-working state but none of my podcasts would download updates anymore.  This pcast key seems to be the key that controls the podcast client in itunes. 

I tried to gain ownership of the key and all subfolders but constantly received errors and was unable to do so using the check box to reset permissions and ownership on all child objects in the registry editor.  So I began to poke around in the subfolders, which I didn’t even see at first.  I tried to delete the key, got an error and then saw sub folders. 

To make this long story short, to fix this I had to do the following.  First, I had to try to delete every key and subkey I could find under the pcast folder.  Then I went into the permissions for each key and add my own user account not as an owner, but under general permissions.  I gave myself full control and did this for every subkey under the pcast folder.  After I did that, I was able to drill down to the bottom most key, and start deleting my way up.  Once you give yourself permissions on all subkeys you can delete the root pcast key.  I re-installed Itunes and its back to working like normal.  I guess I will be more cautious with auto udpates from now on.  And oh yeah, I made a full backup of my itunes configuration and preferences, as well as my library.  Thats important!

Recently I ran into an issue with Exchange 2003 where a recently installed server was not able to see public folder objects in ESM, and a test mailbox was also unable to view public folders through outlook.  I tried everything to get this working correctly; I researched the Microsoft Knowledgebase, posted questions in forums, but finally had to call Microsoft professional support for assistance in getting this issue worked out.  None of the troubleshooting steps laid out in the KB articles hit my issue exactly, nor did I find anything else relating to the cause of this issue online. 

To make a long story short, a mis-configuration of a recipient policy was causing the public folder store to NOT get stamped with a PRIMARY SMTP address.  This broke public folder replication, folder hierarchy view from ESM…etc.  Apparently we had a recipient policy which had a lower case (non-primary) SMTP address specified for mail enabled objects.  This policy was stamping the store with a proxy address, but not with the mail attribute.  Apparently the RUS will only stamp public folders with a Primary SMTP address.  This is mis-leading because most or all of the online documentation references the proxy address as the missing attribute, but what was missing is the mail attribute.  So when you run BPA the resulting KB article references the proxy address, and when you check in ADSIEdit, you see that the proxy is clearly there.  This is what initially threw me off and made troubleshooting the issue more complicated.

To resolve the issue, highlight the non-primary SMTP address in the recipient policy, then click the button “Set as primary” to make the SMTP address a primary address.  Save the changes, then wait for replication or force it if you are impatient.  Once we did this, the RUS updated the public folder object and stamped a mail attribute and then we could see the public folder tree in ESM, replication began working, and my issue was resolved. 

It seems I have a habit of running into issues that have symptoms which are usually associated with something else, so most of the online info I find when researching these problems deal with similar issues, but the causes are normally different than the root cause of my troubles.  It seems that it always takes a call to Microsoft support services to identify the issue and resolve it.  So the lesson to be learned here, is to always make sure you have a primary SMTP Address in your recipient policy.  In this case we had two recipient policies, one was

Once again I find myself picking up the phone for a Microsoft support incident.  This time for something that might be simple, but then again, it might not be.  Basically I have a new Exchange 2003 server that has been installed into a single domain, single Exchange site organization.  This new server cannot view the public folder heiarchey in ESM.  I created a test mailbox on the server and when connecting through outlook, can also not view any public folders.  Pfdavadmin also cannot see any public folders when connecting to this new Exchange server. 

I ran the BPA for Exchange and it says there is no proxy address, but I checked in ADSIedit and have verified it does.  All the other KBs on the MS Support site don’t help and I’ve tried several things with the RUS and rebooting, but nothing has helped.  Rather than continuing to waste my time working on this, I am going to see if MS support can help speed things along. 

It all makes sense now…as of today.  I came to work this morning with a batch of e-mails alerting me to the fact that many of our international users were getting an e-mail from Motorola Good saying they did not have a supported Good Data Plan with their wireless carrier.  We checked with the carriers and verified they had the correct Data Plan that does support GMM. 

A few calls to support and it is all clear now.  Here is what happened.  Remember a few months ago U.S. users started getting letters from at&t wireless saying that you are a GMM users and as such will be automatically switched to an Enterprise Data plan for Good?  That whole process was very confusing, since we paid for our own server and CALs through Good, but then had to pay for a more expensive Data Plan from at&t just because we use Goodlink?  Sounded like double dipping to me and maybe it still is.  Here is the breakdown of how this works now…

   A. You pay for a server license and CALs through Motorola Good

   B. You need a Wireless Data Plan for Good Mobile Messaging (which includes a fee for Direct Secure Transport Service – basically a fee for using the Good NOC).

   C. If you have international users on non-authorized Good reseller providers, you can buy a DSTS plan directly from Good.  

   Its kind of crazy the way this all works, the licensing for Good is confusing and they get you coming and going.  You pay for the server and CALS, but then have to buy a more expensive data plan from a wireless provider that wraps in a fee for using the Good NOC.  So the wireless carrier probably takes a cut, and then you pay Good again for use of their services.  Why not just wrap the NOC fee into the CAL and leave the wireless carriers alone and prevent all this confusion? 

   In any event, my problem today was that apparently we had purchased STS plans previously that had expired.  Good turned off entitlement to these users today without notice.  Now we have to go through sales to renew or purchase new STS plans for a bunch of international users who don’t have the ability to get a Good data plan since there are not that many authorized wireless resellers for Good (7 are listed on the Good website). 

   This goes back to my post about unlimited never truly means unlimited and another post about the letters from at&t.  Oh and not quite related, but relevant, don’t forget to check out my post about goodlink and activesync.