Neal's Admin.Notes.

DNS Intermittently Stops Resolving Some Host Names like Yahoo, Mindspring etc

For the past week, we've had users not being able to send out emails to the likes of Yahoo, Mindspring, Blackberry.net, Verizon Wireless and a few other providers. Now the thing is there was MyDoom attack on some of these sites. Once we verified the domains were up and functional...we tried checking to see if there was a blacklist being used and our domain RUDIN.COM was being blocked. We gave up and started searching within our own internal DNS records.

Randomly, the sites would be resolved if you did an nslookup form the cmd prompt. I finally found out that the cache was not being cleared or is it wasnt clearing it in a timely fashion. So the temporary fix was to go into the Administrator Console and clear the DNS cache. Called up Microsoft and they had a fix to my problem ....A HOTFIX!! - See KB Article 830905.
So tonight I patched our DNS server and miraculously, the Exchange 2003 Mail server started routing all the backed up mail it had in its Queue.

If you have any questions or would like the patch, feel free to email me.

The Backup Completed, but Some Files Were Skipped

For a month or so, I was doing backups of our Domain Controllers using the Microsoft Backup agent, instead of our usual Veritas 9.x . After a few days, I noticed the following errors with Event ID: 8001

The Backup Completed, but Some Files Were Skipped
Warning: Unable to open "c:\windows\SYSVOL\domain\DO_NOT_REMOVE_NtFrs_PreInstall_Directory" - skipped.
Reason: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

This problem occurs because the Windows Backup program tries to back up the DO_NOT_REMOVE_NtFrs_PreInstall_Directory folder during the System State backup. To fix this nagging message as it is will not jeapordize the backup I called Microsoft, and they issues a HOTFIX for it.

Feel free to email me for this patch if you're having the same problem.

Lookout Software bought by Microsoft

A while back I did a review on the Lookout indexing software for outlook. It was just made official that they've been bought by Microsoft. Check out the press release

Way to go Lookout..!! :)

More W32Time Errors

Error ID 12 was happening to my Windows 2000 Web Servers, so I had to reconfigure a time source. The previous time source - A Cisco Catalyst Switch was replaced, messing up my time sync. So here is what you do to get rid of that error.

1) Set a chain of SNTP servers to synchronize with via “net time /setsntp: servername”. You can get a list of local servers to synchronize to from the link below.
2) Run the command “w32tm /config /syncfromflags:MANUAL /reliable:YES /update”. This directs Windows to think that the time is reliable on the local server. The only way to get it reliable is to synchronize with the servers as in step 1.

W32Time Errors on your Windows 2003 Domain Controllers

Recently I have been recieving W32Time errors with Event ID 50. Tried setting the net time a couple times but that was pointless. Then i noticed there was a patch available for this particular error. I went ahead, called up Microsoft, and they issues the patch time me immediately. It worked ..got rid of all my W32Time errors.

If you like a copy of this patch ( UNTESTED!! ) please feel free to email me and I will have it available to you.

Akamai blames 'global DNS attack' for disruptions

There as been alot of dispute the last day or so as to what caused the outage of several sites and search engines. Here is the updated scoop from COMPUTERWORLD

Applying Service Pack 1 to your Exchange 2003 Cluster

Evan gives an insight on one possible way to apply Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2003 Cluster. I've seen it done differently as well, and will post my experiences when I do the same this week.

Automatically Send To from a Shortcut

To create a Send To shortcut that displays a message to a particular person, create a Windows shortcut in the SendTo folder that uses as the target the command
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11" /c ipm.note /m me@adminconfessions.net where the path to outlook.exe is adjusted to fit your system and you replace me@adminconfessions.net with the actual name or address of the person you want to send to. If the name or address contains spaces, enclose it within quotation marks. The shortcut lets you generate a mail message by right-clicking any file, choosing SendTo, then selecting your shortcut. Or you can simply add this shortcut on your desktop, doubleclick it whenever you want to send to that particular person or group.

Administering a Windows 2003 network with an Apple G4 / G5

Its been 1 week now since I've gotten my sup'ed up PowerBook G4, will all the bells and whistles.The G5 ( also sup'ed up) , I had at home was a motivating factor on getting me this . Anyways, my goal now it to be able to fully administer all my servers, from this PowerBook. One of the greatest feature I've found was the Remote Desktop Application for mac. Now I can do administrative terminal services on all my servers from anywhere in the world, as long as I'm VPN'd into my work. Some servers , because of security restrictions cannot be remotely administered, I have a Windows XP workstation Virtual PC installed on the G4 that has all the .NET administration tool, and this works flawlessly. My biggest problem so far is accessing MAPI accounts from OS X. I'm not a fan of IMAP4 so I use the Outlook 2003 installed on my Virtual PC.
I choose Apple computers for a few reasons. There are some critical users at work that are heavy apple users and there is no in-house support for them. I also like the stealth of these things...blazing fast, the dual processor G5 blew away the dual XEON processor XP workstation I have at home. Photoshop runs on the G5 as if was a simple text editor, flawless to say the least. The PowerBook is faster than any laptops I've gone though, an it just works...plain and simple. I wouldn't deny I'm going though some Windows Withdrawal, missing the layout of everything, but I'll get thought it. Besides I haven't totally rid myself of XP, I have an XP Workstation at home and at work , and don't forget the VPC and Remote Desktop are great subsititutes when I'm mobile.

Adding IMAP4 to Exchange 2003 Cluster

This is a simple task, just remember a few things.

The IMAP4 and POP Virtual Servers are not installed as a default resource in Exchange 2003 Cluster. Because of this, you need to change the IMAP Service from "Disabled" to "Manual" on the Services Menu ( under Computer Management -> Services ) of each node.If you do not change the service's properties and tried adding the resource , your Exchange Group will fail...and fail miserably. Anyways..from this point you can go ahead and add you IMAP Viirtual Server, with its dependancies. I use a geographically dispersed cluster, and my dependancies were only the System Manager and the Drives. Enable the resource when you're all done and you can IMAP ! The same process applies to POP service, if you want to add that to you cluster resource that it.