mo_vigilante

Hi, I've used Acronis Snap Deploy 3 for Servers to take an image of the servers and back this up on an external HDD. You can boot to CD, and create the image of the server. It's roughly around £30-£45 for 1 license. The license is for the software itself whether its an EXE or a bootable media. If that's something you want to look further, check out the Acronis websire if you've registered with them. Hope this helps. Mo

Thanks for your input, At the moment I don't have the other servers system state backed up, just the DC. Something to look into I think. I'm trying to look at this from all angles, so that's why I don't know whether doing a seperate system state backup to a NAS box offsite is good (disaster recovery reasons) - I agree if I got latest backup, then easier to restore than rebuild. Think I'll do that. Thanks. :-)

Hi all, Looking for expert advice! How do you guys backup your system state backup? (Server 2008). I have it backed it up onsite to a NAS box, and also have a failover DC on another site which is replicated across. I have tape backups that are taken off site but the tape backups doesn't include the system state - just the file server, apps server and mail server via Backup Exec. My question is do you think I need to do a system state backup offsite rather than onsite to another NAS box? Even though I have a failover DC. We have a fibre link between sites so replication performace is good - so to do a system state backup offsite wouldn't cause too much hinderance I would have thought? Am I just creating duplicate work for myself? Thanks. ;-)

I don't know if this might be of any help to you If you click on TOOLS>ACCOUNT SETTINGS>CHANGE>MORE SETTINGS>SECURITY TAB On here the 'Logon Network Security' - this by default wil be set to 'Basic Authentication'. Try changing this to 'Password Authentication (NTLM) Exit Outlook, and see if the password box appears again or not? Hope this helps. Mo

If you have Sky TV, I'd advise to get an LG TV's. I have a Panasonic 1080p Plasma and my brother in law has aLG 1080p Plasma and the difference to my surprise is different. The LG one picture and colour quality was fantastic, as well as the smoothness of HD programming quality if you know what I mean. Just much much better in my opinion. But yeah, if you have Sky I would recommend purchasing an LG TV.

Hi, The network I've adopted here is pretty good. No bottlenecks, cabling, swtiches, VLAN, structure is good if that's what you mean? The company at the moment is good enough with the current physical hosts. It's just with the ever growing virtualisation being more common, I just felt it was a route to take up on on my next big project next year hopefully. With regards to budget, I don't have any prices at the moment. I will have to wait until next April and see what's left in the pot for me to invest. We're a registered charity so we should be able to get prices pretty cheap (licenses and what not). In terms of virtualising all our servers (DC01, DC02, File01, Apps01, Mail01) - from your experience would it cost a lost? Yeah PM me your plans if you don't mind of what you put in recently, so I can maybe get some tips or advice as if I do get the go ahead - it will be my first attempt. Thanks. Mo

Hi, Thanks for your post. After much investigation I realised on Friday for some time probably a week now that AD is not replicating to the secondary DC, and this is causing problems like DNS issues, adding new objects/users/groups/emails and not replicating over. The site where the secondary DC lives is causing lots of DNS issues for those users (unable to resolve mapped drives because of name resolution for starters). Anyway tried restarting both servers, checked the logs and from this on forums, suggested to manually force replicating from AD Sites & Service. When I attempt to do this, it comes up with an error ‘Access is Denied’ when I try to replicate configuration from the primary DC. It also does the same from the primary DC to replicate over to the targeted secondary DC. I’ve stopped and started the AD service which also stops DNS, Kerberos authentication etc and restarting both DC’s to no avail and tried to replicate and same error message as above. When I read on forums if the manual replication doesn’t work and stopping and starting the services, then I read on that to uninstall AD on the server and reinstall, some threads about demoting and promoting the server again and roles and this should replicate again? To be honest, as I haven’t done this before I’m not sure which method to try and see? Need some advice on what should be the course of action in getting replication back up and running from the things I’ve mentioned above?? Thanks.

Hi guys, Need to pick your brains on this one as as I will be going bald tearing my hair out!! Uptil today one site are unable to resolve DNS queries on the network. All our servers apart from one run 2008 Server Standard (Both DC's, File, Mail, BB Server) - the other being 2003 (Apps Server). Now all other sites are fine and we run on Win XP SP3 and Win 7 across various sites. The weird thing is that on the site I'm having problems at, I am able to ping to the server by it's DNS name, but if I want to browse to a hidden share by the DNS, it comes up with a username/password box and even though you type in the right one, it keeps asking for it. I've tried the following: - - restarted the machine a few times - ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew, ipconfig /flushdns - uninstalled the network card, and re-installed it - even used static DNS pointing to the DC's (primary and secondary) - restarted the servers and did ipconfig/flushdns on the servers - take machine out domain and into workgroup, also applied NEWSid to the machine just in case faulty/corrupt files - I can remote into the server via its DNS, but simply can't browse to hidden shares. I've tried the above to no avail Now that I've taken the machine out of the domain, it won't add it back it lol. Assuming it can't resolve the DNS for the domain?? Weird thing is that we have one 2003 server running our apps and I am able to ping this server by DNS, and I am able to browse the the hidden shares as well. On this same site, there are two machines running on 7 and they are fine - no problems! Just the XP clients on this site. I've contacted the other sites who also run Win XP and 7 and all them sites are ok. I would have thought the servers are fine from this and surely something with these particular clients on this site? I'm beginning to tear my hair out on this. At the moment, I've mapped the users to the shares by it's IP so they can work, but anyone got any ideas on this one?? Any advice/help will be much appreciated! Thanks. Mo

Cheers for the response. Yeah I definitely want to virtualise so hopefully when I draw up my proposal - then management can see the full benefits and agree to it I hope :-D Thanks. Mo

Hi guys, I'm looking in the near future of proposing a plan to replace the existing servers on site. We have few HP ProLiant ML110, ML310, and one ML350 tower server. We have one rack server HP DL180 G6 that is our BlackBerry server which is virtualised. The other tower servers do specific roles (DC, Apps Server, Mail Server, File Server etc) and all of the tower servers are physical hosts. I want to propose a server plan as the tower servers will be getting a bit old in the future. My first proposal plan was to buy a couple of really decent rack mounted servers with SAS drives (500gb each) and virtualiase them all (DC, Apps, File, Mail)..... The second proporsal was to invest a couple newer tower servers but not replace all of them, so less cost and replacing probabaly the oldest server and physical hosts. I do want to get away from physical hosts and the benfits and usefulness of virtualisation with the things I've read on here, but this will of course come down to cost as usual. Has anyone propsed any plans of this kind to management? And if so, what arguments should I state on the plan to push my proposal through? I want to make sure I point all things that support my proposal but I haven't done one before since I've come to my new role. Cheers Mo

I managed to get it working with Win 7. I had to delete the local mail profile and re-create it again. At first, it picked up their email address but didn't grant access when prompting for the password. So I chose to enter the details manually which is the server name, domain and their username! For some reason this allowed to connect to Exchange and updated their mailbox and connected fine. Re-started the machine and couple of times, reconnected the VPN and Outlook and still was doing it. Tried the same steps on another machine and ok so think it should be fine now! Thanks again for your input. Mo

Hi, We are using PPTP and can ping the Mail Server fine with no packets lost. All the other function works fine so the user can access the mapped drives on other servers, and can ping them fine. I don't know if this could be the issue, but I noticed on the DC both primary and secondary, it has the DNS setting 127.0.0.1 which is the local host I assume? Do you think it could be something to do with this with Win 7? I've seen posts on here recommending the DNS should be the DC's IP address so it is able to resolve names accordingly. But don't want to change something and break! Thanks again. Mo.

Hi folks, Wanted to pick your brains just in case you might know. When the user connects to VPN client, they can’t authenticate with outlook and brings up to confirm their user credentials which they input but doesn’t grant them access. When I do the same thing on a Win XP machine – works perfectly fine with authentication with VPN Client. First I wanted to ask is if anyone aware of any authentication issues like this with Windows 7 via connection with VPN Client? Just to confirm the users are using Windows 7 32-bit, using Server 2008 standard and MS Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007. Thanks. Mo

Cheers guys for your inputs. I've been away but hopefully will go smooth like your upgrade. Just a random question - with the existing job setups that are already, can you keep the existing job setups or you do you have to start from scratch to create jobs? Thanks. Mo

Hi is there any chance of doing this by the user's mailbox rather than the OU? I've tried the below command line but I believe this will only run on 32-bit Exchange and not 64-bit according to the error when running this command. See below Export-Mailbox –Identity -PSTFolderPath D:\PST @sukh - I ran that command on Windows PowerShell as that's the only one running on the server and doesn't recognise the Get-Mailbox command? (Get-Mailbox -identity | Export-Mailbox -PSTFolderPath D:\PST) Is there anything else I'm missing out? Thanks.

Hi, I would like a quote for the MCITP Server Admin, and can you do me quotes for both Win 7 Enterprise and Win 7 Enterprise Admin? Thanks.

Yeah me as well for the MCITP server 2008 and Windows 7 in the Manchester area please. Thanks :-)

Just to confirm I've tried to repair through Compact and Repair within Access to no avail. Tried to export the table to a brand new database and does the same thing. Thanks. Mo

Hiya guys, Does anyone know any freeware software for corrupted access databases? One of our tables keep crashing when attempting to open it and thought the database has become corrupted, but when retrieving it back from a few backups - it does the same thing so some corruption with the table in the database. Does anyone got any tips of things I could try? Thanks. Mo

Hello all, In the next week or so I will be intending to perform a upgrade on Backup Exec 12 to 2010. This will be one of my first BIG jobs from my point of view and experience and I thought I'd never learn unless I try to carry it out myself rather than a company. Just wondered if anyone else has gone through this upgrade? And if so, what problem did you encounter if you had any? From what I've read online on Symantec it seems straightforward, but got a feeling it isn't! Just hope the remote agents upgrade goes smoothly as well. Thanks. Mo

@jmcdermott! Thanks for those steps - worked a treat! Genius :-) Mo

I drive a MKIV golf GT TDI 150 and they are awesome cars! I travel to work and do journeys to other sites both on motorways and on A roads. It does me upto 45mpg on A roads but on motorways I can do upto 55mpg generally speaking and the car pulls as well. This one is quite old but you can purchased a Mark V gold GT TDI 170 which is quicker and same MPG consumption. They're quick, lots of torque, and good on mileage and also very reliable cars! I'd consider a Mark 5 if I were you.

Finally got it working! Just browsed for that model on google and audio at the end and some guy posted an exact problem as me apart from running XP home but same issue and luckily there was another link to try. Audio Driver Problem. - The Elder Geek on Windows Anyway I don't know why Fujitsu don't update their driver list on the model type. Thanks again. Mo

As I've started in the last month - I would have thought so. There were 3 machines of these models and I know one definitely worked so I assume the other two worked. Just to confirm I formatted the one that did work and that's the one with the problem. You think the website would have the correct manufacturer. I'm just checking on google to see if there's anything else I can try. Thanks. Mo

Thanks mate. I tried the Windows update but nothing came up on alerts on that hardware. Restarting a few times just in case it needed a few restarts for it to take notice. I will have to get the installation driver CD from the previous IT guy as thought it will be simple getting the drivers from the website. How wrong was I? lol Thanks. Mo