Outlook Web Access 2003 New E-mail Problem

One of my clients contacted me to say that their Distribution Lists weren't working in Outlook Web Access 2003. Due to the roaming nature of staff and the lack of Outlook installed on the PCs, I was unable to get them to switch to Outlook to check if the problem occurred there.

I spent a bit of time on it earlier this evening, only to find that I got a cryptic "The item could not be found. It may have been deleted" error pop up when trying to send an e-mail to a Distribution List created in the user's Contacts.

OK. Back to basics. I created a new Distribution List and added the addresses one by one. Wouldn't you know it, the problem only reared its ugly head on the last email address. Interestingly, the same problem occurred when I entered in the email address into a new message.

I looked at the Contact entry with the associated email address and found the cause of the problem - there was a trailing space at the end of the email address. I backtracked the cause of the error - an import of e-mail addresses from Alt-N's WorldClient created a trailing space for each imported address. How very nice of the Exchange Migration Wizard to create Contact entries with invalid email addresses. Grrr.

Looks like I'll be writing a script to strip trailing spaces from the email fields of the Contact entries...

DHCPServer 1010 1014 1016 Errors

I've recently installed a server at home and installed SBS 2003 SP1 Premium Edition on it. Everything went smoothly and I eventaully set up the Monitoring to send me daily reports. I started to get concerned with the DHCPServer 1010, 1014 and 1016 errors that were occurring daily. Backing up and restoring the DHCP database didn't work, chkdsk /f /r didn't show any errors, and hard drive diagnostics were fine. Memory testing was also fine. I removed Anti-spyware and Anti-virus software. Still no difference.

With much grinding of teeth, the occasional expletive and the desire to smash something out of the way, I continued the Googling to find an answer. Lo and behold, there was a thread in the newsgroup microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs which talked about turning off indexing on the %WINDIR%\System32\DHCP folder. I decided to give this a go by going into the folder properties, clicking Advanced on the General tab and disabling "For fast searching, allow Indexing Service to index this folder". Clicked OK twice and waited a couple of days to see if the critical error count dropped in the Monitoring report. Yes! Victory! The 1010, 1014 and 1016 errors stopped occurring! Sanity has been restored! The cat no longer cringes when I'm around!

Windows XP Netlogon 5719 Errors

Had a new PC to remotely install at a client site. The site is running Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers and makes use of GPOs to manage the settings and software installation. I added the PC to the domain and placed it in the correct OU for the necessary software installation and rebooted. I was very surprised to not see any files being shifted from the server to the PC. Logged in remotely as Administrator and found that the User policies had been applied, but not the Computer policies.
A look through the Event Log found the dreaded Netlogon 5719 error - "no domain controller could be found". Tried locking down the network card to use 100Mbps/Full Duplex. No joy. Tried setting ExpectedDialupDelay in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters. Still no joy.

The network card was an SiS 900 integrated NIC and an old driver was being used. Upgraded to the latest version of the driver. Still no joy. Right. Let off some steam by vigorously chopping some wood that really, really needed it. Still didn't help my GPO problem, but made a big difference to my mood.

I then decided to see what drivers were available to me for this network card. Found that there was a signed Microsoft driver for the SiS 900, so I decided to try this before having to go onsite with a new network card. Installed the driver, rebooted the system and noticed a flurry of file transfers from the server to the PC. Yay!

I shall now make sure that if I see the problem in the future to see if there's a signed Microsoft driver for the network card before getting hot under the collar (especially as the amount of wood to chop up is getting lower!).