Matt

There was a problem with a client PC today using Windows XP and Office 2007.

Outlook 2007 was reporting the Exchange server as Offline and would not reconnect to the Exchange server.  Looking through the Eventlog, there was a Userenv error of 1517.  This probably had a part in causing the system to not connect correctly to the Exchange server.

If you have a system that is experiencing a Userenv 1517 error:

Windows saved user <user name> registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user’s registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.

The resolution I found for this was to:

1. Open the “Active Directory Users and Computers”
2. Locate the “Computer” object and reset it.
3. Remove the PC from the domain.
4. Add the PC back into the domain.

This seemed to fix the Userenv error.

Once this was fixed, there was still the Outlook Connection Error on the same account with different PCs.  With the following error:

Cannot open your default email-folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folder with your offline folder files.

The steps I took to resolve this were:

1. Deleting the account from the Control Panel > Mail area .
2. Open the folder where the OST/PST files are stored and remove all files but the PSTs.  (You can move the OST file to another location if you do not want to delete it quite yet).
3. I am not sure if this helped but I also ran the command  “outlook.exe /cleanprofile” (For 2007)
4. Then I opened the dysfunctional account in the Webmail system.
5. (The trickiest part?) Refresh the webmail and let it talk to the Exchange server for a bit.  In my case it was about 5 minutes. Right after logging into webmail and then trying to run Outlook again still generated the same error.
6. After waiting for a short while, restarting Outlook worked again and the user could access mail again.

Why I had to log into webmail and wait I really don’t know.  But it seemed to fix whatever connection/sync problems the user was having.

Hope this helps anyone that might encounter the same problem.

Good short read from IBM on some useful linux commands.

Lazy Linux: 10 essential tricks for admins.

Phew its been a long time since I have made a post, but that’s because I have been extremely busy with work.  But things are starting to slow down for a bit now.  While reading Digg this morning I found that Symantec Japan has created Norton Fighter in an attempt to convince people to buy more Symantec products.  So ala Power Rangers, take a look at Norton Fighter.  Quite amusing I think, plus I don’t know when this took place because its just down the street from my office.

I just read this news-bit about someone who decided that the server room and the air-conditioners, and how he thought they were not eco-friendly.  Also why you should never let anyone near the cooling system for them.

I finally got around to trying to figure out what was a better way of implementing drive mappings without having to go around to each computer to disable the UAC in Vista. For most people using the computer in the office, this is a good thing as it usually helps prevent unwanted things from running and in the long run saving me time from having to do maintenance on it. When I last looked at trying to get Vista to run my GPO scripts that mounted the drives in my UNC, I had to disable the UAC before it would run them. Apparently this is because the scripts run at a higher privilege level during the login process, and because UAC is running at that time the scripts don’t get executed. Because of this it is necessary to run the scripts after the login process. The techcenter post from Microsoft is a bit cryptic at best and doesn’t cover mixed environments where you have XP and Vista machines running. So the best thing to do is to add in this script that I found on the Internet that is a modified version of Microsoft’s launchapp.wsf. Place this in your GPO’s scripts logon area. And then under the script path, enter in the location of your working XP script one at a time. Essentially this wsf script becomes a wrapper for your vbs code that will determine if the machine you are logging on to is a XP or Vista machine, and then execute the drive mapping script code appropriately. Below you can find the code to implement.

Note: Remember to be patient as when you implement the new GPOs it might take time to replicate over your system. Other things might affect the update such as DFS, network lag, etc. You can force the PC to update their GPO by running the command:

gpupdate /force

Script wrapper code:

<job>

<script language="VBScript">
'---------------------------------------------------------
' This script launches a provided logon script as
' interactive user if the client OS is Vista, otherwise
' the script is directly executed.
'---------------------------------------------------------

' A constant that specifies a registration trigger.
const TriggerTypeRegistration = 7

' A constant that specifies an executable action.
const ActionTypeExecutable = 0

' A constant that specifies the flag in RegisterTaskDefinition.
const FlagTaskCreate = 2

' A constant that specifies an executable action.
const LogonTypeInteractive = 3

' Event Log
Const EVENT_SUCCESS = 0

Dim wshShell

If WScript.Arguments.Length <> 1 Then
     WScript.Echo "Usage: cscript launchapp_v2.wsf <apppath>"
     WScript.Quit
End If

strAppPath = WScript.Arguments(0)

'********************************************************
' Check if the client OS is Vista.
'********************************************************
Set wshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

If IsVista() = True Then
     ' Create a scheduled task
     StartTask strAppPath
Else
     ' Execute the logon script directly
     wshShell.Run strAppPath
End If

Function IsVista
     IsVista= False
     Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!.rootcimv2")
     Set colOSes = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem")
     For Each objOS in colOSes
          osCaption = objOS.Caption
          If instr(osCaption, "Vista") Then
                IsVista = True
                Exit For
            End If
     Next
End Function

'********************************************************
' Create the TaskService object.
'********************************************************
Sub StartTask(strAppPath)
     Dim rootFolder
     Dim taskDefinition
     Dim triggers
     Dim trigger
     Dim Action
     Dim objShell

     Set objShell = Wscript.CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
     Set service = CreateObject("Schedule.Service")
     call service.Connect()

     ' Display name for the new task
     strTaskName = "Launch App As Interactive User"

     '********************************************************
     ' Get a folder to create a task definition in.
     '********************************************************
     Set rootFolder = service.GetFolder("")

     'Delete the task if already present
     On Error Resume Next
     call rootFolder.DeleteTask(strTaskName, 0)
     Err.Clear

     '********************************************************
     ' Create the new task
     '********************************************************
     Set taskDefinition = service.NewTask(0)

     '********************************************************
     ' Create a registration trigger.
     '********************************************************
     Set triggers = taskDefinition.Triggers
     Set trigger = triggers.Create(TriggerTypeRegistration)

     ' Add an action to the task. The action executes the app.
     Set Action = taskDefinition.Actions.Create( ActionTypeExecutable )
     Action.Path = strAppPath
     objShell.LogEvent EVENT_SUCCESS, "Logon Script: Task definition created. About to submit the task..."

     '***********************************************************
     ' Register (create) the task.
     '***********************************************************
     call rootFolder.RegisterTaskDefinition( strTaskName, taskDefinition, FlagTaskCreate, , , LogonTypeInteractive)

     objShell.LogEvent EVENT_SUCCESS, "Logon script: Task submitted."
End Sub
</apppath></script>

</job>

Apparently Windows Server 2008 will be the last Microsoft server to support 32bit architecture.  And thank goodness too.  Hopefully this will finally force developers of software to start making more 64bit drivers and applications in general.  I have tried both the Windows XP 64bit and Windows Vista 64bit only to wind up with grief because some application I used to use, or some piece of hardware (printers!) did not have the 64 bit driver.  How annoying is that.  And the best part of it was, that I read somewhere sorry don’t remember the link, but vendors said that Windows XP 64bit wasn’t “official” in their eyes and thus did not merit developing drivers for it.  What lies…  sigh.  Anyways, you can read more about it here.

From museums to an odyssey to bars and wars, there is everything here for the Geek (nerd?) in you to do when you want to go on a vacation.  Unfortunately, the best thing that I could think of doing would be going to the beach but thats me.  Probably closest to number 2.  Anyways, take a look here its a fun read.

Tom’s Hardware Guide just came out with an article today that talks about the new ICH9 chipsets that will be coming out from Intel in the next few months. Overall, the article looks really good, and shows that the new chipset is quite fast. Even with minor tweaking they were able to clock the FSB up to 1900Mhz with no problem. Wow is that fast. I’m still here with my DDR-400 system chugging along and I thought that was reasonably fast. Looks like I might have to wait and see what happens here, especially when AMD brings out their quad-core systems and see which one stacks up better. My setup here needs another server soon though… Intel and AMD need to hurry up with these so the prices on the current things available can drop faster for me to buy!

The Japanese government wants to go open source, as a way to rely less on a single vendor IT software infrastructure. And plenty of vendors are lining up to help make this happen.

more here

Current Mood: Alarmed

Oh my, they did it again!!! Microsoft is out and about again to start bashing on Linux. Here ala this image:

The website goes on to talk about vendors that switched to/use Windows server in their operating environments. And then also the “facts” on why Windows server should be your choice for a server OS. For me, I suppose that I *must* get it that way I can spend thousands of dollars on an OS that hogs so much resources, I need to get a new computer to support it, and then again more money and resources for it as well. The only good thing might be the Active Directory support, but there are other ways around that as well. LDAP and the sort. I hope the person in the stock photo got paid a lot to have his picture put next to that text.

Oh and I know how to answer their question as well:

“Why do companies that try Linux switch back to Windows server?”

The answer is, because the company hired some person who they thought were supposed to know about computers because they seemed old and mature on the outside, rather than hiring a young person who might be suspiciously too calm for what the job requires.  So, instead of hiring someone with knowledge and skill they hire someone with the minimum amount of capacity and knowledge to be able to outsource this work to someone who prefers Windows server, because they can then outsource that work to someone else and so on. I mean that graphical manual to tell me how to add a user to my AD domain controller is so important.  Without it I would be lost…. mmm… LOST, only three more days or so.  But that is another topic.