MOSS RSS Feed Reader

If you are planning for using MOSS RSS feed reader for getting feeds from internal MOSS sites then you have to change your MOSS authentication settings from NTLM to Kerberos or set your site to run in Anonymous mode or have to use some third party RSS feeds solutions integrated with MOSS such as smiling goat otherwise you will get authentication error message in your RSS feed reader webpart. You can find steps for changing MOSS authentication from NTLM to Kerberos in following article http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832769

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Removing Disconnected Mailboxes in Exchange 2007

Whenever we disable ore remove any mailbox, by default it goes in disconnected state and can be viewed in disconnected mailboxes view in EMC.

For disabling any account you can run following command
Disable-mailbox user@domain.com

You can also remove any account without providing confirm parameter. Confirm parameter will permanently delete the account and this account will not be visible in disconnected mailboxes view
Remove-Mailbox -Database <Database-Name>

If your account is not visible in disconnected mailboxes view you can confirm it by running following command

Clean-mailboxdatabase -identity "<server name>\<storage group name>\<mailbox database name>"

If you want to permanently delete your account then you have to run this command Remove-Mailbox -Database <Database-Name> -StoreMailboxIdentity <MailboxGuid> -confirm:$false

For finding GUID you have to run this command

Get-MailboxStatistics -server <server name> | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid

You have to copy the GUID and then paste in the above command for permanently deleting any account

If you want to remove all disconnected mailboxes then you have to first run following command

$users = Get-MailboxStatistics | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid

Now you have all users in Variable users, you can run following command

$users | ForEach { Remove-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database" -StoreMailboxIdentity $_.MailboxGuid -confirm:$false }

Gmail for mobile 2.0

Google has launched its Gmail 2.0 application for mobile devices, i have tried it on my Nokia N82 and found it very robust and interactive you can download this App by entering http://m.google.com/mail in your mobile device

for more information click on following link http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/10/introducing-gmail-for-mobile-20.html

"IT Evolution"- IT Event arranged by Microsoft

There is an IT event arranged by Microsoft coming in Gulf region named a "IT Evolution ". Following is the Agenda of this event;

09:00-10:00

Registration & Refreshments

10:00-10:45

Keynote: Are You Ready to Move On?

10:00-16:00

Partner Showcase and Exhibition

10:45-11:45

Server Virtualization-Get Virtual Now!

Sliverlight 2.0-Light up the Web

11:45-12:00

Break

12:00-13:00

Hardware Virtualization Visual Studio Team System 2008

13:00-14:00

Lunch

14:00-15:00

App-V - Next Generation Client with Application Virtualization

Windows Presentation Foundation

15:00-15:15

Break

15:15-16:15

SQL Server 2008 - Your Data, Any Place, Any Time

SQL Server 2008 Database Development

16:15-16:30

Closing

Any IT professional working on Microsoft Technologies should attend this session. For more details check out below link.

http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/gulf/ITEvolution/IT_Times/default.htm

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InkSeine from Microsoft Research

InkSeine is a prototype inking application from Microsoft Research. It has cool features designed from the ground up to use with a pen, such as fantastic ink-based search functionality, radial menus, a floating tool ring for image capture and circling the pen to scroll, and of course great inking functionality to jot down and sketch all your ideas. There’s nothing else quite like it InkSeine from Microsoft Research - The Official Video

Help for Moving to SharePoint

Consolidating your your data into a single platform makes sense, and there are tools to make the transition easier.

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Ex-Googlers Release 'Cuil' New Search Engine

A group of former Google engineers have released a new Internet search engine called Cuil (pronounced "cool") that they say exceeds the index size of market leader Google while offering various other advantages. The idea, they say, is to out-Google Google

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Gartner: Cloud Computing is Reshaping IT

A recent report from the analysts at Gartner says that enterprise spending will outpace the economy in the coming years. But the big change is that enterprises are no longer investing in the in-house and self-managed hardware and software systems that

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Google's Browser Created Out of Fear of Microsoft

A deep fear of Microsoft drove Google to create its own Web browser, the company's cofounders implicitly admitted Tuesday, though each was careful never to mention the software giant by name. Instead, during a press conference, Google's leaders discussed

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Microsoft Launches 2008 Hardware Lineup

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled its 2008 hardware lineup, with innovative new mouse technology leading the way. The company also unveiled new keyboards, Web cameras, and an online video service aimed at users of those cameras

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Asia picks up broadband fast, but poor still disconnected

The Asia-Pacific is the world's leading broadband market but a digital divide remains in poorer areas, according to a UN report.

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Ahead of PDC, Microsoft Begins Internal Test of Windows 7

While Microsoft is busy trying to overcome consumer opinions of its current operating system, Windows Vista, the software giant is also undergoing an internal effort to beta test the next version, called Windows 7. Last week, the company began testing an

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Certificate Services unable to start

If you are unable to start certificate services on your CA server and receiving following errors in your CA event viewer

Event Type: Error

Event Source: CertSvc

Event Category: None

Event ID: 100

Date: 8/7/2008

Time: 4:44:20 PM

User: N/A

Computer: XXXXXXXX

Description:

Certificate Services did not start: Could not load or verify the current CA certificate. XXXX Issuing CA The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2146885613).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: CertSvc

Event Category: None

Event ID: 48

Date: 8/7/2008

Time: 4:44:20 PM

User: N/A

Computer: XXXXXX

Description:

Revocation status for a certificate in the chain for CA certificate 0 for XXXX Issuing CA could not be verified because a server is currently unavailable. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2146885613).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

This issue should be occurring because CA is not able to find the CRL. For fixing this issue try to run following command on CA server

certutil –setreg ca\CRLFlags +CRLF_REVCHECK_IGNORE_OFFLINE

After this command restart the Certificate service again and the service should run without any issues.

IIS 6.0 thread access Issue

Three weeks earlier i faced an issue in my MOSS environment.I have an enterprise MOSS farm environment consists of 6 Front-end servers and 5 Application servers. During installation of portal AV solution on these servers, i found that IIS on 5 of these servers were not responding. I opened IIS administration console but nothing was showing. I restarted IIS on all servers but no luck, then i did some research on it and found following MS KB on the same issue

"You may be unable to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager if two threads access IIS 6.0 at the same time"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946517

As per this KB this issue is because "two threads access IIS 6.0 at the same time. In this scenario, you may be unable to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager."
Also regarding SharePoint as per this KB "This problem is likely to occur for the SharePoint Timer service (OWSTimer.exe) in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. When this problem occurs for the SharePoint Timer service, you may experience the following symptoms:

• In SharePoint Server 2007, tasks that are scheduled do not run.
• When you try to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager, you receive a blank page, or you receive the following error message: The path specified cannot be used at this time"

There is an hot-fix mentioned in this KB but it is not publicly available, one has to request Microsoft support for acquiring this. I got this hot-fix from my Microsoft account manager within an hour (because of our good relationship with them ;)) and had applied it instantaneously. The issue was fixed after this patch and haven't occurred yet.

I think that this hot-fix will be included in new windows 2003 service pack(SP3) and also might addressed in IIS 6.0 successor i.e IIS 7.0.

Using SharePoint designer 2007 for backup and restore SharePoint 2003 sites

Before release of SharePoint designer, SharePoint sites can be backed-up and restore by using “smigrate” or “stsadm” tool. Both of these tools are command line and required some background SharePoint knowledge. SharePoint designer is a new tool in this breed; one can easily backup and restore SharePoint sites by using SharePoint designer GUI and performing some basic steps. Following are the simple steps which can be followed for backing up and restoring any SharePoint site.

Site Backup:

Step 1: Open Sharepoint site in Designer

Step 2: Go to Site->Administration->Backup website

Step 3: Click OK

Step 4: Give Name and location of backup file and click Save.

Site Restore:

Step1: Create new SharePoint site for restore (Do not apply template on newly created site, Stop on Template selection screen and don’t click ok)

Step 2: Copy the URL from the Template selection screen (Don’t click ok)

Step 3: Paste this URL in Open site dialog box.

Step 4: Go to Site->Administration->Restore website

Step 5: Select backup file for restore.

Step 6: Click OK for restore.

You will get success message after successful restore

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Use Google Maps to find Google data centers

Pingdom, using information from Data Center Knowledge, has put together an online map showing where Google has build 36 data centers.

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Microsoft ready to 'Mesh it up'

Taking a page from Apple's PR playbook, the company sends out a teaser invitation for an April 24 event to launch Live Mesh, but offers no new details.

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Visualizing Computer Viruses

Want to see computer viruses, funny isn't it? well now its possible to visualize computer viruses. MIT Media Lab's grad student Alex Dragulescu has created some algorithms which can be run on virus data for visualizing it. The algorithm analyzes virus data patterns and then draw imaginary virus which can be seen as a computer simulation.

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RSA 2008: Blanketing security

The annual RSA Conference on information security opens this week in San Francisco, featuring such hot topics as cybersecurity, cryptography, and warrantless wiretapping.

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LCS 2005 End point Issue

Recently I faced an issue in LCS 2005, the users were reporting that they are unable to login on LCS and getting Server not found issue. Some users were complaining that they are unable to send messages. After viewing events in server I found following error;

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Live Communications User Services
Event Category: (1006)
Event ID: 30903
Date: 3/30/2008
Time: 11:49:08 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXX
Description:
The Endpoint expiration stored procedure failed. It will be retried, but if this error continues to occur, the Live Communications Server service will need to be restarted.
Error code: 0x80004005
Cause: Possible issues with backend database.
Resolution:
Ensure the backend is functioning correctly.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

after googling I found 1 KB article on this issue explaining the cause and fix of this issue
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904951
As per MS KB "This problem occurs because of a deadlock condition on the back-end Microsoft SQL Server database. When there is a deadlock condition, SQL Server automatically selects one of the set presence calls as the deadlock victim"

I have checked my back-end SQL server and found some process in deadlock state. I have checked with my backup guy and found that there was an unscheduled backup running on LCS database at that time. I requested to stop this backup and tried to restart LCS services but it didn't work. Then I ran following command mentioned in the KB as a workaround of this issue.

OSQL.EXE -S local\&lt;instance name&gt; -d rtc -E -Q "exec sp_MSforeachtable 'dbcc dbreindex(''?'')'"

Apparently this command was succeeded and showing some messages. One of the messages was informing about a deadlock process and a returning transaction. After this I have restarted the LCS service and checked event viewer once again, but the problem remained same. Then I stopped the LCS service and then re-ran the above command which was succeeded without any issue. Then i restarted the LCS service and checked the event viewer and all were normal.

It seemed to have some indexing issues with the LCS database; I will further investigate on it and try to find out the core cause. Meanwhile I have already initiated a request to Microsoft for this hotfix.

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MSF V3.0 Templates

Today i was searching for MSF document templates which i was using in my previous projects, luckily i found them on following link http://207.46.19.190/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9D2016AD-6F8A-47F5-84FA-BEC389DB18C1&displaylang=en

XP Service Pack 3 remains in testing

Microsoft releases a new test version of the Windows XP update, with final availability still slated for sometime in the first half of this year.

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Intel desktop quad chips arrive in tight supply

Intel mainstream quad-core desktop chips have been a long time in coming though supply is still tight.

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Database Maintenance for MOSS

Bill Baer from Microsoft has recently released a white paper discussing Database Maintenance strategies specifically for MOSS. Must read for any MOSS or SQL DBA http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111531&clcid=0x409

System Center Capacity Planner 2007

You can find Capacity planner for exchange and Sharepoint from following link;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sccp/bb969059.aspx

capacity planner for MOM 2007 will be coming soon

MOSS Capacity Planning tool by Microsoft

Microsoft has finally launched its long awaiting Capacity planning tool for MOSS and other Microsoft Servers. I haven't got ample time to go through this tool but will definitely install it and will share my experience. For those of you who wants an early look on it, please download it from the following link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DBEE0227-D4F7-48F8-85F0-E71493B2FD87&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 free Downloads for students

If you are a student and wants to develop applications by using visual studio 2008 for free then here is a way "Microsoft DreamSpark Professional Developer and Designer for students tools at no charge" at channel 8 you can find 4 Microsoft products totally free for students these products are
1. Microsoft Visual studio 2008 Professional Edition.
2. Microsoft Windows 2003 standard Edition.
3. Microsoft Expression Studio.
4. Microsoft Game Studio 2.0
But wait please read this from Microsoft before you go;
“We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year”
So if your country is not in the list then wait for your turn ;)
Following is the link
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

MOSS - Storage Planning and Monitoring

Microsoft has released a new document for MOSS Storage Planning. The title of this document is "Performance Recommendations for Storage Planning and Monitoring". This document is intended for SQL DBAs and portal Architects who want to plan and monitor their MOSS SQL environment. This document has two sections namely planning and monitoring. A must read for any MOSS DBA. Following is the link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=105623&clcid=0x409

Channel 8 - Portal for IT Students and Researchers

If you want yourself to get updated about Microsoft events or want to read about Microsoft research projects and articles or have fond of reading interviews of Microsoft chaps then this is the place for you. Channel 8 provides all of these in one place, a portal worth to watch for students and researchers.

Windows Server 2008 Reviewers Guide

For all of those peoples who need to know about windows 2008, its features and its offering, they can now benefit from this guide available on following link. http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/0/740ec042-5d5d-4f89-9fd2-8df554774ea4/Windows_Server_2008_Reviewers_Guide.doc

windows 2008 launched

Microsoft Flagship operating system is now finally launched. According to reviews and as per critics this version is like a quantum leap from its predecessors. The canvas of windows 2008 is so expanded that it deserves lots of blogs and reviews. As a startup one should need to see its official website for having a deeper look on its features and offering. The website is worth to watch and delivering a novel idea by depicting server as a robot and OS features as robotic functions. Check it out http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/serverunleashed/default.html