Converting an Exchange Shared mailbox back to a normal mailbox

I have a few mailboxes I created way back in Exchange 2003 that are shared between several people, so after migrating to Exchange 2013 I decided to reconfigure those shared mailboxes “correctly” as actual “Shared” mailboxes. That was easy.

Then I discovered a small problem. Shared mailboxes only work when using the full Outlook client or through OWA. Up to now, Activesync was the primary method of accessing these mailboxes, and you can’t access a Shared mailbox using Activesync!

The reason is pretty simple. Shared mailboxes are created based on a disabled Active Directory user account. This is great for security, and also great because you don’t need a license for that mailbox. By disabling the AD account however, you have no way to authenticate using Activesync.

Enable Reliability and Problem history on Windows Server 2008 and 2012

Should be simple and obvious, but it’s not. This guy explains how to do it really well.

Same steps apply for Server 2012, just check also that the RAC task itself is actually enabled, as well as the triggers.

http://terrytlslau.tls1.cc/2011/01/enable-reliability-and-problem-history_30.html

A mobile friendly TMG forms based (FBA) login for Exchange OWA

I came across this blog post while trying to find ways to change the TMG2010 Forms based login page to match the Exchange 2013 OWA page. I haven’t figured out how to do the OWA 2013 thing yet, but I think this will be quite sufficient:

http://www.fastvue.co/blog/mobile-friendly-forefront-tmg-forms-based-authentication-template

Those instructions are specifically for if you are using TMG Form Based Authentication (FBA) in front of a (non-owa/normal) web site. To make it work with Exchange OWA it needs to be done slightly differently. I’m using TMG 2010 and Exchange 2013, but the settings should be the same for Exchange 2007/2010 as well.

Hyper-V Failed to update configuration for port

On a Hyper-V server I’m seeing an EventID12 in Hyper-V-VMSwitch appearing at what appears to be random intervals. I haven’t seen a pattern to when they appear, but I’ve started paying more attention

Failed to update configuration for port {GUID} (Friendly Name: {GUID}) on switch SWITCH-SM-{GUID} (Friendly Name: {Name}), status = An attempt has been made to remove a file or directory that cannot be deleted..

I’ve found various registry entries that match the various GUIDs, so I’m thinking I’ve ended up with some redundant duplicates or something. The entry seems to describe my actual main Production virtual switch though, so some more investigation is needed.

Computer wakes up for no reason

Computer wakes up “for no reason” by itself at 7:00

If you have Media Centre installed there is an update task that it runs that is set to wake the computer if required.

Configure time sync on Windows Computers

A bunch of commands to set various Windows Time Sync options

Enable “Run as different User” in Windows 8 Start Screen

Windows 8 “Run as different user” isn’t enabled by default for the start page. Here’s how to enable it:

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/05/add-ru … startpage/

Local Computer Policy > User configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar.
Show “Run as different user” command on Start

Ironically, I discovered this while trying to open Group Policy Manager, which is what you use to enable the policies like this one in a domain

I assume this would apply also to Server 2012

Windows BITS job management

BITS Service
bitsadmin is going to be replaced by powershell sometime, but until then…

• Show all jobs pending download: bitsadmin /list /allusers
• Clear all jobs: bitsadmin /reset /allusers

If the reset command doesn’t work (normal for SYSTEM initiated jobs) then

(watch out for wordwrap, the following is a single line command)

net stop bits & Del "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\qmgr*.dat" & net start bits

Windows Update command line options

Windows Update command line options:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720477(v=WS.10).aspx

Read on for all command line options

Installing DotNet 3.5 on Windows 8 and Server 2012

For some reason Microsoft appears to have messed up the install media manifests or something because the components required to install DotNet 3.5 are copied to the local disk so you can add them as a feature post-install. I don’t know if there are other features that have this problem, but I haven’t come across them yet if there are.

So, to install DotNet 3.5 is actually pretty easy. You will need your Install DVD, or an ISO, or a copy of the files from the DVD somewhere.