Windows License / Key Activation Key issues
Click Start and type CMD in the Start Search menu Right Click and choose Run as administrator To remove any existing product key (in case you used a trial key), enter and run the command /upk . Clear the product key from registry by running /cpky To enter your new…
Find out which Process or PID is using a particular port
Recently a customer’s phones had stopped receiving email while their email clients on the pc’s were still working fine. Time to investigate what's going on! First some simple troubleshooting, can I get to the exchange server externally using either telnet on port 25 to the companies MX record (or external…
Removing corrupt Volume Shadow Copies VSS
Howdy all, here’s a nice little one for you and a nice little space gainer. One of my clients servers was running low on space so I checked the Shadow Copies. While are good and do have their uses, if they’re not configure correctly or cleared once in a while…
Exchange 2013 mailbox migration stuck syncing StalledDueToCI
So I’ve just completed an Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013 mailbox migration and to be fair the majority of it went smoothly but it wasn’t without a few bumps along the way which I would like to share with you and what I did to get them resolved. First off,…
Hidden folder – Greyed out attribute
Simple little one this for some reason a clients main Data folder was Hidden, no idea why but some people were obviously complaining that they couldn’t see the folder. Looking at the folder properties the “Hidden” attribute was greyed out. Because of this we need to change it using a…
Restore Default Domain Group Policy
Ah isn’t replication fun fun fun. While overcoming a replication issue the Group Policy Objects got corrupted, fortunately there were only a few which could be created again easily but you can’t delete the “Default Domain Policy” nor the “Default Domain Controller Policy”. In order to restore these you can…
Windows Backup EFI System Partition error
While adding some additional Disks to a Windows Server Backup (SBS2008) one of the new Western Digital disks came with an EFI System Partition, which as it turned out Windows backup isn’t a fan of. Naturally I thought ok a quick format will sort that out but as you know…
Add disks to Windows Server Backup
Ok so following on from setting up Windows Server Backup with multiple Disks Now, on this occasion for what ever reason I didn’t get all the disks added, needed to include another one into the backup but wasn’t onsite and to top things off the previous disk wasn’t available, if…
Windows Server Backup to multiple disks
After a mammoth task of going through various customers backups I’ve concluded that the Windows Server Backup included in Windows Server 2008 onwards is actually pretty good. Ok so it’s a little limited in features but if you’re looking for a complete backup of your server then this tends to…
Exchange 2010 self signed certificate
How to Use a Self Signed Certificate in Exchange 2010It seems to be certificate month here at the moment. I’ve had to setup a self signed certificate for a company so they can connect via SSL to both Outlook Web Access and Exchange 2010 using Outlook (2007/2010)Something you should be…
Large IIS log files
Here’s a nice little tip to shrink or keep control of your IIS log files. While looking at a space issue on a server recently I noticed that their W3SVC3 (this might be different W3SVC1) log files were about 4-5Gb in size and contained thousands of log files. In order…
Unable to export to pfx
Normally a simple task of installing a certificate for IIS and Exchange 2010, however on this occasion once I’d imported the crt file into the Certificate mmc, I couldn’t then export it as a pfx certificate which Exchange 2010 requires for it to be ; As you can see all…
APC Shutdown script
Having to shutdown multiple Servers from APC in the case of a power failure used to be a lot easier, you used to be able to simply install the agent onto any of the other servers you had and then from the single APC admin console add the servers, APC…
Task Scheduler Result Codes
A useful little list of the Task Scheduler result codes so you can translate them:0 or 0x0: The operation completed successfully. 1 or 0x1: Incorrect function called or unknown function called. 2 or 0x2: File not found. 10 or 0xa: The environment is incorrect. 0x41300: Task is ready to run…
How to open a Command Prompt
To open the Command Prompt ( Be careful this is a very powerful tool, not for the faint hearted )Click the Start Menu and in the ‘Search programs and files’ box type cmd and hit click the Start Menu and click ‘Run’, in there type cmd and hit Ok or…
How to open Registry editor
To open the Registry editor ( Be careful this is a very powerful tool, not for the faint hearted ) Click the Start Menu and in the ‘Search programs and files’ box type regedit and hit Enter or click the Start Menu and click ‘Run’, in there type regedit and hit…