Archive for October, 2006

How to Create a Shared Calendar with Small Business Server 2003

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

You can use the Vacation Calendar on the http://companyweb intranet site that comes with Small Business Server or you can create a shared calendar in Outlook Public Folders.

1) Go to http://companyweb and select the Vacation Calendar on the left. You can add the calendar to your Other Calendars list by clicking on the Link to Outlook button at the top of the Calendar. The downside to this method is that the calendar is read only in Outlook. You cannot add items to the intranet Vacation Calendar in Outlook, you have to go to the intranet site and submit new items there. Method two is almost as easy and is fully editable in Outlook.

2) To make the shared calendar in Outlook, click the Folder List button at the very bottom left of the Outlook Window. This will display your entire folder list in Outlook. At the bottom of the list is Public Folders. Folders and items in those folders are accessible and editable by everyone (by default). Expand Public Folders, then right click All Public Folders, select New Folder, Choose Calendar Items, and give it a name. You can put it on your list of calendars by right clicking on it and selecting Add to Favorites. Next time you click on your Calendar it will show up in your Other Calendars list. Select it and it will display on a split pane with your personal calendar. Once it is created, it will show up in everyone’s Outlook Folder List under Public Folders, but they will have to add it to their favorites for it to show up on their Other Calendar list.

Microsoft SBS 2003 and Veritas Backup Exec 10.1d Error Messages

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Error: 1

This is a common error message that occurs when a user is deleted and the
mailbox retention time is set to a value other than 0.

The Job Notification reports:

(Server: “Servername”) (Job: “Backup 00006″) Backup 00006 — The job
failed with the following error: The directory is invalid.

The error in the job log reports:

Completed status: Failed

Final error: 0xe000fe09 – The directory is invalid.

Final error category: Resource Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to
link V-79-57344-65033

Backup- \\SERVER\Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes V-79-57344-65033
- Directory not found. Cannot backup directory ?User Name [uname] and its subdirectories.

Link to Veritas Support Doc:

mhttp://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/241981.htm

You can set the deleted mailbox retention time to 0 to fix the
problem, but this will disable the ability to recover a deleted
mailbox. Open the Server Management screen on the server and
expand the Advanced Management section. Drill down through the
Exchange instance, Servers, Servername, First Storage Group,
Mailbox Store. Right click on the Mailbox Store and select
Properties. Go to the Limits tab, and change the option Keep
Deleted Mailboxes for (Days) to the appropriate amount of
days that the mailbox should stay on the server to 0.

The other option is to train the person that is responsible
for deleting users to purge the mailbox after deleting the
user. Open the Server Management screen on the server and
expand the Advanced Management section. Drill down through
the Exchange instance, Servers, Servername, First Storage
Group, Mailbox Store, Mailboxes. Right click the Mailboxes
folder in the left pane and click the Run Cleanup Agent.
Recently deleted user’s mailboxes will be in the list with
a small red “x” on them. Right click the recently deleted
user.s mailbox and select Purge. Please note that selecting
yes will permanently delete the mailbox and the email therein
will not be retrievable except from previous backups.

Error: 2

I have only run into this error once, and I am still not
sure what caused the problem. My guess is that a program
that included an SQL SP3a backend was installed on the
server that had SP4 already installed on it.

The job log reported:

V-79-57344-33938 – Backup or restore operation terminated
abnormally. An error occurred on a query to database.

0xe0008492 – Database Query Failure. See the job log for details.

Link to Veritas Support Doc:
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/276443.htm

The solution was as follows:

  1. In the SQL 7.0 installation path (by default \Mssql7\Binn)
    rename the DLL’s Sqlresld.dll and Sqlvdi.dll to
    Sqlresld7.old and Sqlvdi7.old
  2. Copy from the SQL 2000 installation path (by default
    \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\COM) the DLL’s
    Sqlresld.dll and Sqlvdi.dll into the SQL 7.0 installation
    path (by default \Mssql7\Binn)
  3. According to the Microsoft article, it is also recommended
    to place the Sqlunirl.dll and Sqlsvc.dll (into \Mssql7\Binn)
    due to the DLL’s dependencies.

Before I overwrote the files as the support document suggested,
I checked the file dates and sizes. The files to be overwritten
were older. I also stopped all SQL services before overwriting
the files, though the article did not specify to do so.

Error: 3

This was a seemingly random error that occurred out of the blue
after several weeks of successful backups.

The job log reported:

Completed status: Failed

Final error: 0xe00084f8 – The network connection to the Backup
Exec Remote Agent has been lost. Check for network errors.

Final error category: Resource Errors

Backup- SERVER\SHAREPOINT AOFO: Initialization failure on:
“\\SERVER\Microsoft Information Store\First Storage Group”.
Advanced Open File Option used: No.
The network connection failed during the snapshot. Check
the network, and then run the job again.

V-79-57344-65072 – The Exchange Store service is not
responding. Backup set canceled.
AOFO: Initialization failure on: “Shadow?Copy?Components”.
Advanced Open File Option used: No.
The network connection failed during the snapshot. Check the
network, and then run the job again.

V-79-57344-65072 – The connection to target system has
been lost. Backup set canceled.

This was resolved by changing the Resource Order of the
Exchange items. The Veritas solution was to try to backup
the Exchange Public Folders and Mailboxes in separate
jobs, but I found an alternate solution that resolved
the problem. It was as simple as setting the Public
Folder Store to be backed up before the Mailbox Store.
Thanks to the original poster in the Veritas Newsgroups.
I was not able to find the Newsgroup thread again to give
proper credit to the gentleman who came up with the solution.

Remove Network Load Balancing Startup Error on Windows 2003 Server

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

A default installation of Windows 2003 Server, including Small
Business Server, will have the Network Load Balancing Service
enabled. This will cause the Service Control Manager to display
an Application popup before login: “At least one service or
driver failed during system startup. Use Event Viewer to examine
the event log for details”. In the Event Viewer a Service Control
Manager Event ID: 7000 will be displayed with the following details:

Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date: 10/6/2006
Time: 12:07:03 AM
User: N/A
Computer: NS2

Description:

The Network Load Balancing 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.

A supposed fix for this is to view the properties of the network
connections on the server and remove the check for the Network
Load Balancing Service in the list of Services. I have yet to
see this fix work.

The fix that I have found and use on my productions servers
requires a quick registry change. Please note that changing
the Windows registry can have disastrous results if you make
the wrong changes. If you are not sure about the changes you
are making, contact qualified professionals like New Age
Digital to assist you!

  1. Start Registry Editor. Click Start, Run, type
    “regedit” in the Open box, and click OK.
  2. Drill down to the
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WLBS
    registry key.
  3. Right click the WLBS registry key and click Export.
    Save the file with a descriptive filename to a secure
    location. This will backup the registry key and allow
    you to restore the key if you make a mistake or decide
    to use Network Load Balancing in the future.
  4. In the right window pane, right click registry
    entry named Group, and then click Modify.
  5. Clear the Value data. Simply delete the PNP_TDI
    and leave the field blank. Click on OK, and close
    the Registry Editor.
  6. On reboot the Error message will no longer be displayed.

If you wish to enable Network Load Balancing, browse to the
backup of the registry key and double click it. Windows will
ask you to confirm importing the data into the registry.
Approve the import and reboot. Note that any registry key
restore will overwrite existing registry values. Any changes
made to the other values under the WLBS key will be
overwritten as well.