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February, 2008:

When Did You Last Defragment Your Exchange 2003 Server

Feb 21st, 2008
by David.
3 comments

Bet you don’t recall when you last defragmented your Exchange 2003 server. For those organizations with full time IT staff, this should be a task on their to do list, but how many small businesses, particularly those using the SBS variants are likely to do it regularly, if at all.

This is a straightforward task which can and likely will save you gigabytes of hard drive space, and the bigger the organization, the more space you’re likely to save.

Whilst not difficult, it does involve the command line and for this reason I believe most small business owners who “look after” their own servers, wouldn’t even realize it needs doing, let alone how

I spoke to one client recently who thought defragging exchange server 2003, was the same as the “disk defragment” graphical tool that we are all aware of. Why would he believe anything different.
Here is a brief run down of the process assuming you have a default installation.

  1. Backup your exchange data
  2. Verify your backup
  3. Open Exchange System Manager
  4. Using Exchange System Manager drill down to Servers / YourServerName / First Storage Group
  5. Right click Mailbox Store (YourServerName)
  6. Click Dismount Store
  7. Right click Public Folder Store (YourServerName)
  8. Click Dismount Store
  9. Leave the Exchange System Manager open, we will come back to that later
  10. Click Start / Run / Type cmd then press enter or click ok
  11. Type cd\program files\exchsrvr\bin then press enter
  12. Type eseutil /d “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\pub1.edb” then press enter
  13. The system will now begin defragging the public folder store. It will take a few minutes to complete.
  14. Once completed, type eseutil /d “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb” then press enter
  15. The system will now begin defragging the mailbox store. This should take considerably longer to complete than the public store. Be patient here.
  16. Once completed, type exit then press enter. The command prompt now disappears.
  17. Now, click back to our window containing the Exchange System Manager
  18. Right click Public Folder Store (YourServerName)
  19. Click Mount Store
  20. Right click Mailbox Store (YourServerName)
  21. Click Mount Store
  22. Close the Exchange System Manager

All complete. May sound like a lot of steps, but really quite straightforward and worthwhile.

SEO Advice For WordPress Blogs

Feb 19th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

Carrie Hill and Mary Bowling from Blizzard Internet Marketing have published a very helpful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guide for all aspiring bloggers.

It’s aimed at the WordPress community but gives great advice for anyone blogging using any blogging platform.

The guide covers topics like “why a wordpress blog?,” promoting your blog, SEO plugins, etc.

Click here to take a look for yourself.

WordPress.com – Now With 3Gb Of Free Storage

Feb 18th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

One of the few limitations at wordpress.com, the free blog host was the amount of storage you were given with the free accounts. Matt Mullenweg’s recent post shows that the storage limit has been raised by factor of 60 from 50Mb to 3Gb.

Matt’s recent post said. “Our hope is that much in the same way Gmail transformed the way people think about email, we’ll give people the freedom to blog rich media without having to worry about how many kilobytes are left in their upload space”

I’m sure bloggers who use wordpress.com will greatly appreciate this new feature.

Vista Open Command Prompt At Specific Folder

Feb 18th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

Instead of opening a command prompt, then having to manually type cd / etc, etc, etc to get to the folder you need, try this tip.

  1. Open Computer or Windows Key + E
  2. Drill down to the folder you wish to work with.
  3. Whilst holding down the shift key, right click the folder.
  4. You now have a new menu item. Open with command prompt here.
  5. Click and you’re done.

Try the same on a network share and see what happens. It automatically maps a drive for you. How cool is that.

Microsoft Security Updates For February 2008

Feb 14th, 2008
by David.
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Here is the list of security updates that Microsoft released in February 2008.

Please ensure to patch your software as required.

Here are the new security updates:

  • MS08-003 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows (KB 946538)
  • MS08-004 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows Vista (KB 946456)
  • MS08-005 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows, including Vista (KB 942831)
  • MS08-006 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows (KB 942830)
  • MS08-007 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows, including Vista (KB 946026)
  • MS08-008 – addresses a vulnerability in Windows, including Vista. (KB 947890)
  • MS08-009 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office (KB 947077)
  • MS08-010 – addresses a vulnerability in Internet Explorer (KB 944533)
  • MS08-011 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works (KB 947081)
  • MS08-012 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher (KB 947085)
  • MS08-013 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Office (KB 947108)

Go to the Microsoft site for further information.

Outlook 2007 With Vista Prompts For Password

Feb 14th, 2008
by David.
1 comment

Sick of having to type your password every time you open Outlook 2007 even though you know you have saved it?

Then give this tip a try.

Open the following path:

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft

Once open you will see numerous folders including a “protect” folder. Delete it.

When you have deleted the protect folder, restart Outlook. You may need to type your password(s) once more but once saved, that should be it.

OpenDNS – Fast Free Reliable DNS Resolution And Content Filtering

Feb 13th, 2008
by David.
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Are you websites slow to resolve? Then why not try using alternative DNS settings in your router.

Whilst most of us think we have to use our local ISP’s DNS servers, we actually don’t. Where at times our local ISP’s DNS servers can be unreliable or slow, why not try the OpenDNS servers.

OpenDNS provides a free, fast, reliable DNS resolution service. You don’t even need an account with them to begin benefiting from the service.

All you need to do is reconfigure your router with the OpenDNS servers instead of your ISP’s. How simple is that. Likely it will take you longer to work out how to login to your router or recalling the router password than it takes to make the configuration change.

OpenDNS also provides content filtering in the form of:

  • Phishing protection
  • Typo correction (once configured try typing google.co and see what happens)
  • Domain Blocking
  • Adult Site Blocking

The IP addresses of the OpenDNS servers which you need to put in your router are

  • 208.67.222.222
  • 208.67.220.220

Uninstalling Symantec Endpoint Security (SEP) 11 On SBS 2003 Breaks RRAS

Feb 13th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

If you have uninstalled Symantec Endpoint Security (SEP) 11 and can no longer start the “Remote Access Connection Manager” service, this post might help you.

The problem SEP 11 created took quite a while to work out, but was a simple one minute fix. Nothing to reinstall, just a few simple registry edits. If you are comfortable editing the registry, then this should be easy for you.

The follow procedure relates only to Microsoft SBS 2003 and Symantec Endpoint Security 11. Please carry out these steps once SEP 11 has been fully uninstalled.

As always, backup your registry before editing. Then follow these steps on the SBS 2003 server.

  1. Click Start then Run
  2. In the Run dialog box type regedit and press enter or click ok
  3. Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ RasMan \ PPP \ EAP
  4. Double click EAP and you will see at least the subkeys 13 and 25
  5. Click on 13
  6. On the right side of your regedit screen, find the following four keys.”ConfigUiPath, IdentityPath, InteractiveUIPath and Path“
  7. Change the value data in each of the four keys listed in step 6 to “C:\Windows\System32\rastls.dll” (without the quotes). Make sure to check on your server that this file exists at that path.
  8. Click on 25
  9. On the right side of your regedit screen, find the following four keys.”ConfigUiPath, IdentityPath, InteractiveUIPath and Path“
  10. Change the value data in each of the four keys listed in step 6 to “C:\Windows\System32\rastls.dll” (without the quotes). Make sure to check on your server that this file exists at that path.
  11. Exit the registry editor
  12. At this point I ran the “Connect to the Internet” wizard from the server management console.
  13. Finished. No reboot required. All worked correctly.

Solid State Flash To Replace Traditional Drives

Feb 11th, 2008
by David.
2 comments

We have been using the conventional or traditional hard disk drive for around 20 years now. But a change is on the horizon to the use of solid state flash memory. What if any benefits will this give us?

As there are no moving parts within the solid state drives, like the memory cards we use in digital cameras, reliability should be greatly improved. But this comes at a cost, a great cost.

The early models are only 32Gb or 64Gb compared to the 500Gb or larger drives that are currently available in the traditional style, but these bad boys can cost more that your whole pc or laptop.

I don’t think many of us will move to this technology for a few years as the first generation drives are:

  • Expensive
  • Small storage capacity compared to traditional hard disks
  • Not many companies manufacturing so limited in choice
  • Did I mention expensive?

Once the engineers overcome the lack of capacity and exceed 100Gb or more then the only problem for the consumer is the cost. Like all tech items, give it a couple of years and we’ll be waving a distant farewell to old trusty.

Sorry old trusty, you too will be another door stop to add to my forever expanding collection of high tech gadgets.

Pretty Permalinks With IIS6 And WordPress

Feb 10th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

Want to pretty up your WordPress permalinks running on an Windows / IIS6 server? Then you need the free WordPress URL Rewrite ISAPI filter by Jon Tackabury from Binary Fortress Software.

Jon has written an ISAPI filter for IIS that makes your WordPress links easily readable by us humans.

Installation is straightforward and full instructions are included in the download file. It took me about 10 minutes to download, install and configure Jon’s filter, along with the required Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable.

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