Blog.BenLuckman.com Random place for blogging stuff I learn and teaching others

27Feb/120

Restart a Draytek Vigor router remotely using telnet

Useful if the web interface is causing you problems.

(For 2008/Win7 you'll need to make sure that you have the Telnet client installed - an option from Add/Remove Programs or Server features)

c:\>telnet [routerip]

>sys reboot

Simples.

22Feb/120

Scheduled Task won’t run a simple batch file in Windows 2008 Server R2

I had a very simple scheduled task that did 2 things; (1) run a simple batch file to create a file containing a directory listing and (2) send that file to me via email.

Simple. Or so you might think.

It would send me the file, but not update it first.

The gotcha, after a while of searching etc, was that you have to enter the script folder in the "Start in" field. Else it just won't work - and won't really give you any meaningful error messages.

22Feb/120

Where is the log file for NTBackup on Microsoft Server 2003?

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data

Where [username] is the user who created the job.

21Feb/120

Installing Sophos Endpoint Protection to Windows 7 using Sophos Control Centre 4

There's a bit of a gotcha when deploying Sophos clients (v9.5) to Windows 7 machines. The installation requires the Remote Registry service to be running which isn't by default on Windows 7 machines.

Simple fix - start the service...

...Problem - you've got to do this manual process before you use the automated deployed. Doh. That's just silly!

Solution - use group policy to update computer configurations to set the Remote Registry service to start automatically.

Registry settings for starting Remote Registry service using group policy mmc

So you want to update the Computer settings for the group policy that applies to all of your clients computers, particularly he ones that you are deploying the Sophos client to.

Open Group Policy MMC, navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > System Services

Find the Remote Registry entry, double click and set to 'Automatic'.

Allow the policy to refresh across the network (being a computer policy this *may* require a reboot - worth leaving it 24/48hrs to sink through). Now try and deploy the Sophos client again.

Filed under: AntiVirus, Sophos No Comments
22Aug/110

Unable to add new domain to Default Email Address Policy in Exchange 2010

Sometimes I think Microsoft purposefully break the EMC GUI in Exchange 2010 to push people to use the command line console.

Doing something as simple as adding your domain to the default email policy - which will automatically create the smtp email address whenever a new mailbox is created - ends is an error.

(Organisation Configuration > Hub Transport > Email Address Policies > Default Policy)

Summary: 2 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed.
Elapsed time: 00:00:00

Edit Default Policy
Failed

Error:
The operation can't be performed on the default e-mail address policy.

Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
set-EmailAddressPolicy -ConditionalDepartment @() -ConditionalCompany @() -ConditionalStateOrProvince @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute1 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute2 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute3 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute4 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute5 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute6 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute7 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute8 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute9 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute10 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute11 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute12 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute13 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute14 @() -ConditionalCustomAttribute15 @() -RecipientContainer $null -EnabledEmailAddressTemplates 'smtp:@domain.local','SMTP:@mydomain.co.uk' -Identity 'Default Policy'

Elapsed Time: 00:00:00

Apply Default Policy
Cancelled

Not that I know why it actually fails, but I do know how to get it to work. Instead of using the EMC GUI use the command line Exchange Management Shell and the following command with updating with your domain details.

Set-EmailAddressPolicy -Identity "Default Policy" -EnabledEmailAddressTemplates SMTP:@mydomain.com,smtp:@domain.local

Note that the upper-case "SMTP" dictates which address is used as the default reply to address.

Also it may not apply straight away - so to push it out to all mailboxes, you can go back to the EMC GUI > Organisation Configuration > Hub Transport > Email Address Policies > Default Policy, Right click on the Policy and choose Apply...

18Aug/110

Windows 2008 Group Policy – Adding a shared printer crashes the GPM MMC

Here's a blog post I found on how to stop the MMC from crashing (stoopid Microsoft!)

http://www.safeguardict.com/blog/?p=66

28Jul/110

Keep on disconnecting the user session when using Remote Desktop Remote Control

After installing a new 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Server we found that when we used the Remote Desktop session manager to remote control user's sessions, when we disconnected the session using the breakout keys, it would also disconnect the user's session. This obvously didn't look good from a support perspective.

Here's a quick fix of how to avoid it:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverTS/thread/87fc497a-27fd-4a76-ab59-ea5fe01c9091

Naturally we now deploy this to all of our clients with Remote Desktop servers.

28Jul/110

Remove Administrative Tools from your Remote Desktop/Terminal Server using Group Policy

Bugged me for ages: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/4a129b22-84c5-4bc6-8fb5-f2291f227cc0/

28Jul/110

New Windows 2008 Server won’t respond to PINGs

If you've built a new 2008 server, or have an existing one, that you are simply PINGing but it strangely won't respond, you may find that it's one of the default Windows Firewall rules getting in the way of things.

All you need to do is enable the rule:

  1. Start Menu
  2. Control Panel > Administration Tools
  3. Windows Firewall with Advanced Security
  4. Inbound Rules
  5. File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In) (v6 too if you are in the future!)
  6. Right-click and choose Enable Rule
  7. Et voila!
25Jul/110

Windows 2008 Terminal Server + Office 2003 + Office 2007 Compatibility Pack

Now this one has bugged me for quite a while so I'm pretty chuffed that I've managed to fix it.

I had created a new Windows 2008 R2 (x64) Remote Desktop Host (a.k.a. Terminal Server) for one of our clients who still using Office 2003. Naturally they are receiving documents on 2007/2010 format with the xlsx format.

It all sounds simple. Just install the OS, the Apps and the compatibility pack. Not so - you won't be able to open .xlsx files or save files to .xlsx format.

The secret is that you need to set both the Excel Shortcut and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\excelcnv.exe to run in compatibility mode to run for XP SP3.

Since it's a Terminal Server remember to "Change the settings for all users"