Using the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool on SBS

By now you probably have a fleet of Windows Mobile 5.0 devices in the field, and you've been reading up on all the new security benefits that WM5.0 provides to your business, or your clients business. You get excited (as any good person would about solid security) and install the Using the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool.

And that's when things seem to go wrong.

Not to worry! There is a solution for you!

First, open the IIS manager and ensure you still only have one default website. If you have two, then you should probably

1. Un-install the web tool


2. Copy down the IP address settings for the default website, and change them to All Unassigned


3. Re-install the web tool


4. Revert the IP address settings to what you had copied down before

Next, you'll want to check the ExAdmin virtual directory.

1. Open IIS manager again (unless you never closed it)


2. Check out the Directory Security in the Secure Communications tab, edit it and clear the Require secure channel (SSL) box.

Finally, we need to ensure the MobileAdmin virtual directory is running in the Exchange Application Pool

1. Again in IIS Manager, expand default website and open the properties of the MobileAdmin virtual directory


2. On the Virtual Directory tab, in Application Pool, select ExchangeApplicationPool

Phew! After all that you're good to go with mobile administration. Now you can again celebrate the best in mobile security using your SBS server as the centerpoint of that security.

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Expanding?

Perhaps you need some more servers in your network. You're in luck!

Today the SBS writing team has published two great whitepapers for you

• Running Multiple Servers in a Windows Small Business Server Environment


• Add and Manage Additional Servers in a Windows Small Business Server Domain

Nothing like some fresh white papers. :)

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Sync Errors from Mobile Devices in your Server Status Report

Ok, new tip for you. When you're the person that gets the Server Status Reports from the Small Business Server, and you notice a critical error that your boss (or person who pays your salary/bills) can't sync his mobile phone to the server, you may want to jump on it a little faster than I did.

Sure, I didn't get in trouble because I was actually doing the rest of my job, but it would have made his life easier.

What am I talking about? Daily I have seen the following exerpt from the Server Status Report on our Catfood server here at the office:

Now finally getting the chance to take a peak, I looked at the IIS logs located in %windir%\logfiles\w3svc I was able to determine that the phone was indeed logging into the server, but failing to synch. So the password wasn't an issue.

The goal was to get it fixed as quickly as possible. So we took the approach to remove the inbox from the server sync schedule, sync the phone, and then add the inbox back in, essentially resetting the inbox sync with the server. Problem solved, the phone now sync's perfectly, and there aren't any ugly red X's on my server status report.

... Now if I can just get people on the team to stop typing their password incorrectly, I might get a clean server status report!

Whoops, I just realized that the error above is a picture, so MSN and Google won't be able to find this post if you search for it. The error is "Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [] User: [] HTTP status code: [409]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly."

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My First Swing Migration

This weekend was my first Swing Migration. I have to say that I'm impressed with the process. It's kind of nice not to have to touch all the clients after a migration.

We had a few minor snags, and didn't optomize the process as much as we could have, but we got through it and things are in good working shape again. If you haven't checked out the Swing Migration process, you should, it's worth the time, and along the way during the migration, you might actually learn something: I did.

So what problems did we have? Well, the first problem was we hit a replication problem from the production SBS server to the temporary DC. It must have been something in the steps that we missed, because after fighting for 5 hours to try to get it to work, we started over with a restored VPC image of the Temporary DC and things went much according to plan. In Jeff's first version of his documents he says to watch the event log to tell when replication is done. In speaking with Jeff and actually doing it myself, we discovered to use the command net share from a command prompt to look for the SYSVOL and NETLOGON shares to appear, some rebooting may be required. We can probably also blame the slow replication on the old server, it was fairly slow and had some hardware issues slowing it down even more! (Yes, it was definitely time to migrate!)

Once we got past this hurdle, it was smooth sailing, the replication from the temporary DC to the new SBS server was a snap! Following that install of SBS, followed by the SP1 and the premium CD, then the Todo list, Trend Micro AV.

Last but not least, we had the Exchange Fork-Lift and data migration. In order to leave the previous SBS server exactly intact, we decided to move the data through other means than the network, that being a USB disk. We copied the MDBDATA folder from the old server to the USB disk in 10 minutes, then there must have been only USB 1.0 on the new server (odd yes) but it took upwards of an hour!!! Once that was done, we copied the files over and the mount failed!!!.

Luckily, reading Jeff's documentation we realized that we needed to have the databases and log files in exactly the same position as they were on the old production server. Fixing this the store mounted immediately.

Finally (and still currently pending) is the restore of the use data to the new server from the same USB disk. Of course we have to do this around the Seattle SeaHawks in the SUPERBOWL!!!!, but that's ok, the restore will probably take 9 hours!

Let me tell you what I find most impressive about this process.

• On the first reboot of the new production SBS server, we checked out the eventlogs, only to see a failure of the Folder Redirection. After the installation of all the SBS 2003 parts, this error went away, and the folder of the server was actually already redirected, exactly as it was in the old domain!


• After we finished the ForkLift of Exchange, we quickly browsed to https://localhost/exchange and logged in as a user of the system, the mailbox already contained over 6000 email messages! How is that for cool!

So there you have it. If you've got the extra hardware for a Swing Migration, you should definately give it a shot, if you're having trouble, just check out the You Can Swing That - SBS Migration website for updated documentation.

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Using your Smartphone/PPC as a gateway to the Internet over Blue Tooth

You give a Dev a laptop and a smartphone, and you end up with really cool links in your inbox. This particular one I want to share.

Last week I was asking myself how much I actually spent on my Internet access. It came out to a pretty heafty sum because of the amount of money I pay for my SmartPhone to get access. I was wondering how I could use that same internet access on my cellphone for more and more uses. Then my trusty dev Leszek, pointed me to a site on how to connect your bluetooth SmartPhone or PPC to your Laptop wirelessly to create a gateway to the Internet for use on your laptop! Especially handy when you don't want to pay for internet access at your local Starbucks.

If you're interested, check out the instructions over at SmartPhoneThoughts.com

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ISA SP2 is released!

Well, The ISA Service Pack 2 is available for you few, but passionate folks who are running SBS Premium with ISA 2004 installed.

The service pack comes with a roll-up of all the hotfixes currently released, and a few new features. Don't get all excited just yet. The features are primarily focused at Enterprise solutions including BITS Caching, HTTP Compression and Traffic prioritization.

As The SBS Diva mentions, make sure you install this from in front of the physical box. During the install, the box enters lock-down mode in which case you won't have any traffic flowing inside and outside of the network. Oh yes, and another thing, this means that your folks won't be browsing the Internet during the upgrade also.

So choose your Install time wisely ....

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Christmas Lights ....

Just a fun bit of trivia for you. The awesome Christmas Light Show to the Song of Wizards of Winter, was actually orchestrated using Windows! The software and hardware used is available at Light-o-Rama (although apparently there are others D-Light and Animated Lighting).

Instructions and the how-to and details of what he did are available at A website his friend runs.

Windows Rocks!

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Taking Group Photos?

If you don't know, I'm a big photography enthusiast. I carry a camera at all times, and have a larger more effective camera that I take to places I know I'll be taking good photos.

Anyways, over the holiday, I was taking photos of all my cousins kids, who don't have the time or patience to help me capture a great photo of them. A new tool from Microsoft Research called Group Shot is now available for such problems. I'm going to be checking it out soon on those photos I took of my cousins kids to see if I can't get a good composite!

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XBOX Support Rules!!

Ok, I know that I posted already today (hopefully you don't consider this overwelming), and I know that I work for Microsoft, but I gotta give these guys credit.

Stepping back for a second, let me start at the beginning. I didn't pre-order my XBOX 360, I thought perhaps from the first launch of the original XBOX, there were plenty left over, why pre-order? Well, come November 22nd, 2005, I was outside CompUSA at 3am in the dark with some other keen fellows. I was pretty happy with myself, I had gotten some sleep, and I was #22 in line! Sweet!

Five hours later, I was discouraged to find that only 16 XBOXes had arrived at this location and I was, for lack of better terms, SOL. My desperate hunt for a 360 (no we can't just buy them at the company store) managed to land me an XBOX on December 21st. I thought I had one from Gamestop, but it turns out they were hacked, and someone put their 360 webpage online without their knowledge. Finally, Circuit City came through. Then Fed-Ex lost the package, only managing to find it one day before I left for the holidays! I was done!

However, on the holiday's I started to quickly realize that there was a problem. Any 360 game I placed in the console reported a very nice animated graphic "Place this game into an xbox 360 in order to play it". Hrm, it was reading the games as a DVD, not a game.

Let me explain the process here, this is where I get REALLY impressed! I call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX, I get the tech after two or three pushes of buttons, the tech asked if I had a discrepancy between PAL and NTSC games and console. I did not.

Two days later, I had a box at my doorstep, with pre-paid shipping & packing instructions, I dropped it off at the local DHL and over-nighted to Microsoft (and no, it wasn't the Microsoft in my same state). This was Wednesady of last week. Tonight I was going to call to find out the status, but instead, I was greeted by a box on my doorstep and a note that says "Because we know you love your xbox, we've replaced it so you can get to playing it!" Sweet! I put it back in its place fire it up and bingo! I'm up and running again. Even the content I purchased from XBOX Live is readily available for me to download again!!!

Naturally, you're going to ask what about my saved games? I managed to transfer everything but my Perfect Dark Zero to my memory card, so I barely lost anything, and I was planning on finishing PDZ again anyways.

Well, you can call this gloating, but this post is meant to the folks at XBOX support, and Microsoft support in general. You guys Rock! Keep up the good work!

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Windows Mobile 5.0 and Self-Signed Certificates

Happy New Year. I know, I know, the posting isn't as often these days, but when you're heads down on things that you can't speak about, it's a little hard to have other time to investigate cool stuff. And yes, for those of you interested, I'm still working on the steps for hosting multiple websites via ISA, I think that's my only outstanding request.

Anyways, now that Windows Mobile 5.0 is available, I'm allowed to discuss this particular topic. It's becoming known that the self-signed certificate that is created as part of running the CEICW (Configure E-Mail and Internet Connection Wizard) doesn't install on devices running the latest version of Windows Mobile. Well, the good news is, that's because we've made the device much more secure. As a result, your device is much more robust to threats from the outside world. However, it does unfortunately cause a slight headache for our SBS customers.

If you have an i-mate (typically the Audiovox SMT5600) you might not be completely out of luck, as over at Club I-Mate once you register your device (which yes, requires making an account) there is a device that can install such certificates on your device. Depending on how locked down your provider makes your phone this could be an option.

The quickest, most efficient way to get Over the Air Synch against the Exchange server to happen is to install a trusted certificate. But be careful! Not all certificates are created equal. Windows, and by the transitive property, Internet Explorer, trust far more root certificates than Windows Mobile based devices. When you're purchasing your certificate, if you plan to use a Windows Mobile based device against your SBS server, make sure the certificate chains up to one of the core root certificates: VeriSign, Cybertrust, Thawte, Entrust, GlobalSign and Equifax. Without this, to the mobile device, it just looks like a self-signed certificate...

Good luck!

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Happy Holiday's & a Wonderful New Year from the SBS Product Team!

This is a note to all of our OEMs, Partners, customers, Value Adding folk, business owners, information workers, and pretty much anyone who touches SBS or walks, talks and balks in the SBS communities.

Here at Microsoft, the Small Business Server product team want to wish you the warmest of holiday's and a very happy new year!

All the Best!

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Live Meeting for Support?

Trump knows where it's at. Two weeks ago, "The Donald" aired the episode of The Apprentice which showed Live Meeting as a great place to save time on travel, and have virtual meetings in which to collaborate and work together on digital documents.

What they didn't tell you is what you can use it for! Every techy should have an account with Live Meeting. Just the other day, my father was having issues with his XP client. Apparently some pop-up was happening saying that he should pay for the use of some videos. My father didn't know what they were talking about, and couldn't find the "I didn't watch any videos" button. Lucky for him, he didn't have his credit card handy. :)

For some reason, I could not get TS or Remote Assistance to work on his PC to help him clear up his spyware. Instead, I started a live meeting session, invited him into it, made him the presenter and then took asked for control of his desktop. With just the two of us in the meeting, I was able to control his PC through Live Meeting. I of course, removed the spyware, and installed the handy-dandy Microsoft AntiSpyware application to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future.

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File Synchronization Technologies...

So a friend of mine would define this technology as "hot". Microsoft just aquired the FolderShare company. I just installed the trial version of Foldershare. You should read up on the features. It's pretty impressive.

The highlights are you can synch file changes between computers while they are running, over the Internet. Then you can go to this webpage and search all your computers from a single webpage! A nice side effect is that you can go to the website, login and browse the file structures on your computers. As long as they are running.

Might want to choose a strong password for this one, but it's a great service!!

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Where are you?

Having trouble finding out where to go? Check out Local.live.com. It's pretty cool, once you find where you're headed to, switch it into "Birds Eye View". Once you switch to that view, you get the 3/4 satellite view. It's great for seeing where you're headed before you get there!

Check out the Seahawks Sadium!

Never be lost again...

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