Author Archives: Kevin Burke

All OUs in this domain should be protected from accidental deletion

Best Practice Analyzer on one of our Domain Controllers was reporting; “All OUs in this domain should be protected from accidental deletion.”

Using Active Directory Administrative Center right click and OU and select properties, on the Object Tab is a checkbox “Protect from accidental deletion”

Protect From Accidental Deletion

Protect From Accidental Deletion

You could also use Active Directory Users and Computers you can right click and OU and select properties, on the Object Tab is a checkbox “Protect object from accidental deletion”

However if like me your AD is complex with lots of OU’s you may want to do this a little bit quicker.

Enter Powershell!

Using “Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell”

First check which OUs aren’t protected:

Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -filter * -Properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $false} | ft

Then to protect them:
Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -filter * -Properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $false} | Set-ADOrganizationalUnit -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

Then rerun the first command to verify the change has been made, you should get no results.

You could then double check using Active Directory Administrative Center  or ADUC.

Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) on HTC Radar – Part 2

In November last year I posted a review of Windows Phone 7.5 on my new HTC Radar….Previous Blog Post

I have now been using it for a few months and have to say….

IT IS EXCELLENT!

Why? Continue Reading

Exchange Transport Rule Corrupting Mail

A really interesting thing was happening to some of our clients e-mails which we eventually discovered was relating to Exchange Transport Rules.

Here is the mail flow through our setup.


Internet

\/

Sophos ES1100

\/

Exchange 2010

\/

Exchange 2007

\/

Client


The reason for both Exchange servers is that we are currently in the process of migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010.

In particular circumstances email was coming through containing what can only be described as “oriental” characters, see below…..

tml> 格ead> 猼tyle㰾!– .hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { font-size: 10pt; font-family:Tahoma } –>⼼style> ⼼head> 㰊body class=’hmmessage’㰾div dir=’ltr’> 昼ont face=”Tahoma” size=”2″>,⼼font㰾div style=”font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt; “㰾br㰾/div㰾div style=”font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt; “>

Upon further investigation and an attempt to replicate the issue it was found to occur through some e-mail clients when sent from mobile devices.

Our first instinct was to investigate any possible problems with the Sophos Email Appliance.

However upon doing further searches on the internet there was a suggestion that certain Exchange Transport Rules could be the cause of this issue.

As we were in the process of migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 the existing Transport rule from our 2007 Hub Transport server had  copied over to the 2010 Hub Transport server.

The transport rule in question simply applied an HTML disclaimer to all e-mail both internal and external.

We disabled this rule and the problem disappeared (at least we were unable to replicate it).

Upon further research we found that we could enable the Transport rule to add a disclaimer to mail going external only.

It would appear that the process of Exchange Transport Rules re-writing certain HTML type e-mails  would cause the corruption of e-mail as illustrated above.

Installing Exchange 2010 SP2

This morning I have installed Exchange 2010 SP2.

I must say it was (as expected) a very straightforward process.

The setup wizard passed most pre-requisites first time.

The only pre-requisite which failed was the UM Language Packs.

As I work in the UK I had the en-GB language pack installed.

This was easily done using command prompt in the
<EXCHANGE SERVER INSTALL POINT>\bin directory

I ran;

Setup.com /RemoveUmLanguagePack:en-GB

Then continue with the install.

Once completed re-install the language packs, the desired language pack can be found here;
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=231660

Download the correct one and run it and you will have your desired UM language pack installed.

The only other issue I came across was the
“You must close all dialogue boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console” problem.

A quick google pointed me here;

http://smtp25.blogspot.com/2011/07/you-must-close-all-dialog-boxes-before.html

This seems to indicate some problem with IE9.

I added https://localhost  to trusted sites in IE9 and all worked fine.

So as said the install was all good and was straightforward.

 

Are Tablets The Future Of Education?

Working in education is always a balancing act between budget restrictions and the use of the latest technologies.
Does the future of education lie in the use of “Tablets”?

Will every student have access to their own personal mobile device? Continue Reading

Disjoint Namespace – Netbios Domain Differs from DNS Domain Name

I administer a Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory Domain.

All was good, all worked OK.

Came to install Exchange 2010 and found the missing “Document” functionality (but I don’t like to talk about this!).

Made a decision to implement UAG 2010 with SSO for OWA along side File Access and access to Remote Apps (RDS).

Followed recommended guides for setting up UAG with SSO but was always prompted for Username and Password when accessing OWA.

Continue Reading

Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) on HTC Radar

I have been using (very happily!) an HTC Desire running Android 2.2 (Froyo) for a couple of years now.

I have been contemplating new phones for a few months and have finally taken the plunge and aquired an HTC Radar running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango). Continue Reading

Additional Steps for Exchange 2010 Migration

After evaluation of the new features of Exchange 2010 the decision to implement it was taken.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 introduces the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant or ExDeploy, a new Web-based tool that can help you with your Exchange deployment. ExDeploy asks you a few questions about your current environment and then generates a custom checklist and procedures that help simplify your deployment.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home

DO NOT FORGET (as I did!)

Install Exchange SP1

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/04/07/3409710.aspx

Because I also neglected to tick the Install pre-requisites check box I also came acrosss the following aditional steps I needed to carry out……

Continue Reading

Asus EeePad Transformer TF101 Tablet PC Review

 I have just taken delivery of my new Asus Transformer – the name is cool btw!
Thought I would test out the keyboard docking module by writing a quick blog review of the Tablet.

First Impressions.

Upon opening the packaging you can’t help but notice how well made the tablet is.
The bronze finish is very nice.
As an Ipad owner also I could not fail to compare the 2 devices.
The Transformer is more shiny on the screen area and this does admittedly make it a bit harder to view and you do indeed find yourself angling the screen for the best position.

Continue Reading

Adding a Driver to a Netboot Image

At our organisation we use Ghost to image our workstations.
This is done in conjunction with PXE Boot.
From time to time a hardware manufacturer will incorporate a new network card.
This can cause problems with PXE Booting!

Quick Overview of PXE Boot in Windows Environment;
(further info here http://netbootdisk.com/pxeboot.htm )
  Setup TFTP Server on DHCP Server
  Add Scope options to DHCP
    066 Boot Server Host Name – TFTP Server Name
    067 Bootfile Name – pxelinux.0

Get Netboot Files from http://netbootdisk.com/.
Get Winimage from http://www.winimage.com/download.htm
Get WinUHA from http://www.klaimsoft.com/winuha/
Download latest NDIS drivers for your network card

Our boot image file is test.imz

Open test.imz with winimage

Right click extract NetBootfiles.uha

Open files.uha with WinUHA and extract

Replace the relevant ndis driver file with the latest version (in our case Broadcom Driver B57.dos)

Re-archive files.uha with WinUHA (make sure files are compressed into correct directory structure)

Now back in Winimage select Image, Inject and re-inject the files.uha into the NetBoot folder.

Save the image file

Test

All Done!

Nicey Cake!