Tech Support by Old Gate Consulting, LLC

How to Remove Content Advisor Password in Internet Explorer

2009-01-30

To remove the content advisor password in Internet Explorer, start REGEDIT and dig to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Ratings Delete the object called KEY in the right pane. Restart the computer. Open Internet Explorer and choose View then Internet Options in the drop down menus. Select the Conent Tab and click disable. When asked for a password, just click OK.

Join a Microsoft Vista PC to a Windows Domain

2008-12-08

With Windows XP a VPN tunnel has to be created first for everyone, then join the domain. After reboot, use the logon using dial-up networking feature to create a cached profile on the local machine. Make sure to add the domain user to the local administrator group, to allow configuration changes for the new profile. In Vista there is no logon using dial-up networking option. Create a VPN tunnel to the Microsoft network, join the domain, then reboot. Logon as the local administrator,...

Parallel Port Service Failure with Hyper-V

2010-03-31

We are currently migrating many Microsoft servers into Hyper-V servers using disk2vhd.exe. A lot of the older servers have a parallel port included. Microsoft Hyper-V does not support parallel ports and when the new virtural server is started. We get: "The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it." To disable this service do the...

SMTP greylisting problem on Exchange Server 2003 SP2

2008-12-05

Some of our customers who run Exchange Server 2003 sp2 have reported very old emails (weeks old) being delivered after the server has been rebooted. This is caused by the "greylisting" spam-fighting technique some mail servers are using. These servers will refused incoming mail on the first attempt and most spammers will not try again, while legitimate servers will retry again later. We have found two methods that work:

Attachment Can't Create File Permission Denied

2009-02-21

When trying to attach a file to a new email message in Outlook an error would popup stating "Attachment Can't Create File Permission Denied". To fix this error, the temporary folder used by Outlook needs to be cleaned out. Open REGEDIT and drill down to your version of Outlook, see table below for your version. Outlook 97 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Outlook\Security Outlook 98 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.5\Outlook\Security Outlook...

WAN Miniport (PPTP) device

2008-12-08

How to restore WAN Miniport (PPTP) device 1. Download devcon.exe from some Microsoft site. Devcon Overview 2. Open netrasa.inf in c:\windows\inf 3. Look for the section [Msft.NTx86 or MSFT] 4. In the DeviceID column, you can see the installable devices. 5. Run this command to install the WAN Miniport (PPTP): devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_PptpMiniport. 6. You can install the other devices similarly. I think you will need MS_L2tpMiniport, S_PtiMiniport,...

Reinstalling a HP USB Printer with 'specified port is unknown' error

2009-02-07

A Windows XP computer print spooler had gotten corupted when a network printer was added to it by the user. The following steps were taken to bring the local HP LaserJet 1020 back online. Make sure you have local administrator rights. Disconnect the local USB printer. Run the CLEANSPL.EXE. This will remove all printing components. Reboot computer. Run regedit and goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print/Monitors. Backup the registry entry by right clicking on...

XP hangs with DCOM error 9B1F122C-2982-4E91-AA8B-E071D54F2A4D	2009-02-14
A customer of ours had a newish (less than a year) Windows XP computer that would not shutdown or restart properly. It would, after a very long period of time return to the login screen. The event logs reported a DCOM error of {9B1F122C-2982-4E91-AA8B-E071D54F2A4D} every time a shutdown was done. After much searching the Internet we came a cross a thread by Patti MacLeod, Microsoft MVP.

Outlook Express spell checking in French

2009-04-08

After upgrading or installing Microsoft Office 2007, the spell checking in Outlook Express (OE) 6.0 will only list French. The English language dictionary in Word 2007 is NOT compatible with OE. Microsoft recommends searching for a 'free spell-checking programs available on the Internet' and installing it or install Windows Live Mail. See link below. We did have one customer that when we installed the 3rd party spell checker and were testing it, MSIMN.EXE would use 100% of the CPU and...

Exchange 2007 OWA	2008-12-05
By default there is a 5MB limit on viewing documents with Exchange 2007 OWA. This can be change by added the following DWORD "MaxDocumentInputSize" to the regersty location: HKLM\System\CCS\Services\MSExchange OWA\WebReadyDocumentViewing Then, restarted the World Wide Web Publishing Service.

Manually move a Microsoft Exchange 2003 database

2009-01-13

Exchange 2003 installs by default to the 'C' partition and when the hard drive fills too full it's imposable to move it with the Exchange system manager. This procedure will work for both the private and public stores. 1. Stop the Exchange 2003 information store via the services icon or net stop msexchangeis in a command prompt. 2. Copy the MDBDATA folder to it's new location, leaving a copy at its old location, just in case. 3. With adsiedit.msc from the Microsoft Windows 2003...

Exchange 2003 database limits

2008-12-05

Exchange 2003 Standard Edition database size was hard-coded to 16GB. With the release of service pack 2 it was raised to 18GB and can be set as high as 75GB. Care should be taken when setting the database size, to not exceed total free disk space on the hard drive. Configure the logical database size (EDB + STM - free space) by creating a DWORD “Database Size Limit in GB” in the following registry...

Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager

2010-04-14

Following the install instructions for Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager on a Windows 2008 R2 server or SBS 2008 server, which are very easy. The last step in the install, is to push the client software to the workstations which was very easy too. However, the workstations never show up in the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager group. Both the Microsoft and Symantec logs reported no errors. The problem is, the local Microsoft firewall is blocking the communications between the server...

Dual WAN routers and slow Internet browsing

2008-12-23

Users reported slow or ‘fail to load’ web pages on first access of a web site. After the first page loaded everything seemed fine. We checked internal DNS, bandwidth speeds on both circuits, adjusted load balance to favor the better circuit and upgraded the internal switch to a managed gigabit switch. Nothing worked. Finely, we started to look outside the network and found, that one of the forwarding lookup DNS servers was not responding. Switching to a public DNS server (not root hints)...

ActiveSync and G3 iPhones

2009-07-11

We have a customer with 2 G3 iPhones with a SBS 2003 server and ActiveSync was being utilized for the last few months. Then, last week, the phones starting acting up, connecting then not and then not at all. We had to reset permissions by running the 'Internet Connection Wizard' again. Reset the IIS default virtual directories by editing the metabase.xml and create a valued public SSL certificarte.

Teaming NIC's on a SBS 2003 install	2008-12-05
When installing a SBS 2003 with teamed NIC cards. During the networking install section, select the teamed card as your primary. SBS will then turn off all the other cards including the members of the teamed cards. Turn on these NIC's before moving on the next section.

SBS Exchange 2003 Mailbox Limits	2008-12-05
When migrating a SBS 2003 server to new hardware, installing the new Exchange server software to the existing Exchange organzation will reset mailbox limits to the Microsoft defaults.

SBS 2003 Migration and MS firewall	2009-05-16
When migrating from Windows 2000 or SBS 2000 to SBS 2003, the SBS install procedure needs to be stopped after the basic OS is loaded. The new server needs to joined the existing domain, transfer FSMO roles, install DNS and force replication between DC's. If replication does not work, check that the new server does not have the built in firewall turned on.