Fixing SBS 2003 RWW for Console Access From XP SP3, Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008

Sick of waiting for Microsoft to release a fix to RWW to enable Console access to SBS 2003 and any other Windows Server 2003 systems connected to your SBS network? So am I. So I’ve fixed it. Process is as follows:

Navigate to C:\Inetpub\Remote

Make a copy of tsweb.aspx

Open tsweb.aspx in your favorite editor (mine’s Notepad++)

Line 304 looks like this:

MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings2.ConnectToServerConsole = console

 

Replace it with this:

version = MsRdpClient.Version
if strcomp(version,"6.0.6001") < 0 then
  MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings2.ConnectToServerConsole = console
else
  MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings2.ConnectToServerConsole = false
  MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings6.ConnectToAdministerServer = console
end if

 

Save the changes. You can now establish console sessions to your SBS 2003 box and any other Windows Server 2003 boxes on your SBS network.

If anyone’s got a better way for displaying code in a Blogger page I’d be interested in knowing about it.

SBS 2008 RC1 Is Out

Microsoft have made SBS 2008 RC1 available via Public Preview. It can be downloaded from here.

Other useful links from the TechNet site:

Release Notes, Installation Guide, SBS Documentation, SBS Resources and the SBS 2008 Evaluation Centre.

 

Very handy documents to download and read:

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Installation Guide

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Console Help

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Migration Help

Migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2003

Migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2008

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Release Candidate Reviewer’s Guide

 

Three very useful resources to keep an eye on while evaluating and testing SBS 2008:

The Official SBS Blog

SBSfaq.com

Smallbizserver.Net

 

And finally, if you plan on testing this in a Virtual Machine, check out:

VMWare Settings for SBS 2008

Note that SBS 2008 requires 4GB of RAM. It won’t install with any less memory than this. You can use an evaluation of VMWare Workstation or either VMWare Server or VMWare Server 2.0 Release Candidate. Both VMWare Workstation and VMWare Server 2.0 Release Candidate support USB 2.0 devices, so you can test server backups/recovery with removable USB drives with these products.

Sophos Enterprise Console - Stuck on Connecting to Server

I have a problem on an SBS 2003 Premium Edition box (2 NICs and running ISA Server) where launching the Enterprise Console sits forever at the connection screen.



This is the same problem even if I perform a console-only install to a separate box.

The drastic remedy is to reboot the server. By using the console on a separate box I was able to use TCPView to find that EnterpriseConsole.exe was connecting to MgntSvc.exe on the server.

I then tried stopping the service from the command line:

> net stop "Sophos Management Service"

Which resulted in me being told that the service could not be stopped. I then used PsKill to stop the service:

> pskill "Sophos Management Service"

And I then restarted the service:

> net start "Sophos Management Service"

This then allowed me to successfully use the Enterprise Console.

SBS 2003 Media, Service Packs, Repair Install - Oh My!

This has been a long-running battle I've had with Microsoft over the years - the inability to either roll my own slipstreamed SBS media, or obtain slipstreamed SBS media at reasonable cost (like the Volume License media kits).

Why would I want to roll my own or access low-cost SBS media, you ask?

Well, if you ever have to do a Repair Install of your SBS box and you've added a Service Pack, you're hosed. The Repair Install will undo the service pack applied to the once-working box, and on reboot will give you a lovely blue screen. The only way around this is to restore from the last full backup, or re-image from your favorite imaging tool of choice (two listed below if you're not already using one).

Thanks to the wonderful advances of products like Acronis True Image and ShadowProtect, performing Repair Installs are a thing of the past, especially if you're using Repair Install to migrate a Retail SBS install to new hardware. The hardware independent restore capabilities of these products makes a full backup / minimal install / full restore / repair install redundant, as well as a lot slower.

But it's a pain if you don't have these, so make sure you have SBS media from the same channel (OEM, Retail or Volume License) with the Service Pack you're running already slipstreamed. Or simply don't install Windows Server 2003 Service Packs to SBS 2003 boxes.

Microsoft Action Pack, New Assessment Criteria and New Special Edition Toolkits

As a Microsoft Registered Partner, I'm able to utilise the fantastic Microsoft Action Pack Subscription. This enables me to run my business on the same technologies I recommend to my clients, as well as evaluate and prepare for new and upcoming technologies. Combined with my TechNet Plus subscription, I'm able to evaluate a wide range of Microsoft technologies cost effectively. Virtualisation also enables me to test networks larger than my physical network.

Recently Microsoft introduced an assessment requirement to gain access to the Action Pack. This assessment requires partners to take an e-Learning course and then pass its associated assessment with a minimum score of 70%. This assessment must be passed every two years to receive uninterrupted Action Pack Subscription updates (see Eric Ligman's blog post on Action Pack Downgrade Rights for the best reason to not have your subscription lapse). The recommended courses are:

• Selling Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2003
  
• Implementing, Managing and Deploying Applications in Windows Server 2003
  
• Designing, Deploying and Managing a Network Solution for the Small and Medium-size Business
  
• Selling Microsoft Solutions to Small Business
  
• Implementing Microsoft Solution Accelerators for Small Business
  
• Introduction to Selling SQL Server 2005
  
• SQL Server 2005: Essentials for Sales Professionals
  
• Volume Licensing for Small and Medium Businesses
  
• Small Business Sales and Marketing Assessment (Small Business Specialist Requirement)

All but the Small Business Sales and Marketing Assessment (SBSMA) are Online Tutorials. The SBSMA is classed as an Assessment and as mentioned above is a pre-requisite to become a Small Business Specialist.

Microsoft also introduced two Special Edition Kits to the Action Pack. These are the Web Solutions Toolkit and the Small Business Specialist Toolkit. Both of these toolkits require additional assessment to be performed prior to issuance.

The Web Solutions Toolkit requires one of the following e-Learning courses to be passed with a minimum score of 70%

• Microsoft .NET Assessment
  
• Microsoft Expression Assessment
  
• Microsoft Office Live Developer Assessment

I completed the Microsoft Expression Assessment quite easily, as I had recently used Expression Web to build my Web site and have been playing with both the Expression Design and Blend CTPs over the last few months.

The Small Business Specialist Toolkit requires that you have completed the requirements to become a Small Business Specialist. The full details can be found here. The short form of this is:

• Become a Microsoft Partner
  
• Pass the Small Business Sales and Marketing Assessment
  
• Pass one of the following exams:
  
  • Microsoft Exam 70-282 - Designing, Deploying, and Managing a Network Solution for Small and Medium-Sized Business
    
  • Microsoft Exam 70-631 - Configuring Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
    
  • Microsoft Exam 74-134 - Pre-installing Microsoft Products Using the OEM Pre-installation Kit

Both of these Special Edition Kits will be refreshed biannually.
Another good reason to perform e-Learning and become certified!

Stopping Sophos PureMessage 3.0 from Generating an NDR Storm

I upgraded to the latest version of Sophos PureMessage (v2.6.1 upgrade to v3.0) on an SBS 2003 server.

The upgrade went smoothly as per usual. Hats off to Sophos for providing good quality products and excellent documentation.

This version now includes AD integration and allows for recipient validation. I enabled this, as well as verifying the upgraded settings. I kept an eye on progress for about 90 minutes as I was performing other administrative tasks.

When I came back to it the next morning, the server was being sluggish. Investigation showed that the were several thousand NDRs queued up, and further investigation revealed that the Exchange journal mailbox was bouncing Read Receipts with a Permission Denied error back to PureMessage. Unfortunately, the Read Receipts had no From header, so PureMessage was generating an NDR and trying to send it to an address of '<', which is a completely invalid address. This was then escalating an alert message to the Alert address, which had filled up the resulting mailbox. The mail bounce that was occuring was also generating an unscannable error due to too many nested attachments, which also queued up an alert message.

The remedial action was to remove the administrator alert address. This stopped the queuing. I then turned off administrator alerts for the On Unscannable action for the Exchange Store scanning and the Transport scanning. This helped stopped further NDR flooding.

The final action I performed that finally killed the NDR storm was to fire up the Exchange System Manager, go into the SmallBusiness SMTP Connector properties, go into Content Restrictions and turn off System Messages.

I also opened up the Delivery Restrictions placed on the mailbox that I'm using for Exchange Journalling until I can verify what the appropriate restrictions should be on the mailbox such that it works with PureMessage 3.0, seeing as the previous settings worked fine with PureMessage 2.6.1 (which was only accept messages from the Exchange Journalling mailbox).

Modifying SBS 2003 SP1's bkprunner.exe for Improved Backup Performance

I'll quickly jot this down before I forget.
I've recently been having a shrinking backup window on one of my client's SBS 2003 boxes. It backs up to tape and I didn't want to create a backup script and lose the nice reporting features that SBS provides. So I hacked the bkprunner.exe process instead :-)
On my own SBS 2003 box I was getting terrible server performance during my daily backup to USB drives. I found the undocumented /FU switch that was included with the SP1 version of ntbackup and some registry modifications that the Exchange team of Microsoft IT performed to improve their backup performance.

Open Explorer and go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server\Backup"
Make a copy of bkprunner.exe

Download and extract XVI32.
Run XVI32.exe
Open bkprunner.exe in XVI32

The address range $10F0-$11B7 is used for backups to .bkf files
The address range $11B8-$1277 is used for backups to tape

To turn off verify when backing up to a .bkf
Go to address $113A
In the hex pane (the middle one), type in the following hex values:
6E 00 6F 00 20
This enters in the text "no " in Unicode format.

To turn off buffered writes (as explained in MSKB 839272 and also here) when backing up to a .bkf - recommended
Go to address $115E
In the hex pane (the middle one), type in the following hex values:
46 00 55 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20
This enters in the text "FU " in Unicode format.

To turn off verify when backing up to tape
Go to address $1202
In the hex pane (the middle one), type in the following hex values:
6E 00 6F 00 20
This enters in the text "no " in Unicode format.

Registry modifications for performance
Run regedit
Open HKEY_USERS
Load Hive
Open SBS Backup User's NTUSER.DAT registry hive; call the key name BACKUP
Browse to HKEY_USERS\BACKUP\Software\Microsoft\Ntbackup\Backup Engine.
Edit the value of the entry Logical Disk Buffer Size from 32 to 64.
Edit the value of the entry Max Buffer Size from 512 to 1024.
Edit the value of the entry Max Num Tape Buffers from 9 to 16.
If the above keys don't exist, create them as String values.
Click on HKEY_USERS\BACKUP
Unload hive

Small Business Server 2003 - The Dreaded 5 CAL Reset Issue

A runaway process on SBS2003 decided to fill up all the disk space on C: in the early hours of the morning. The fallout from this was the System log was corrupt and the SBS license data was reset to the default 5 CALs.
The System log was easy to fix - reboot the server.
The SBS license data was an absolute pain. I'd never run the "Back up licenses" utility in the Licensing section of Server Management. Microsoft have KB article 888818 discussing this, which is either re-enter the licenses, restore the C:\WINDOWS folder or restore a backup of the licenses.
The first wasn't an option as I was offsite and the person with the key to the safe wasn't in. The second was just not viable - why Microsoft couldn't specify which file/folder needed restoring I don't know. The third would have been OK if ever I had run it.
After much stuffing about I found that the SBS2003 licenses are kept in the licstr.cpa file in the WINDOWS\system32 folder. Thankfully, Microsoft actually keep an automatic backup of this in autolicstr.cpa. The simple process was to stop the License Logging Service, rename licstr.cpa to licstr.cpa.old, then copy autolicstr.cpa to licstr.cpa. After this I started License Logging Service and used Server Management to confirm that the licenses had been restored.