So, managed to get everything installed and working great yesterday, really fought with the Cisco VPN client, but I eventually managed to get it working (or so I thought!) installed all windows updates before shutting down last night .. arrived at the office a little earlier this morning, turn my laptop on, BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!, happened a few times yesterday while I was fiddling with the Cisco VPN client so I figured I’d just repair it and try again, only, this time I was not so lucky..

To cut a long and frustrating story short: Windows 7 rebuilt and looking good again..

For the Cisco VPN client, I tried many things, this is how I managed to get it to work:

• Install Citrix DNEupdate
• Reboot
• Take ownership and delete ndis.sys (in c:\windows\system32\drivers).
• Take ownership and delete ndis.sys.mui (in c:\windows\system32\drivers\en-us).
• Install Cisco VPN Client 5.0.04.0300.
• Reboot
• Windows 7 will repair itself (should take a few seconds) and automatically reboot.
• Cisco VPN Client should work without any other tweaks.

Many thanks to Aaron Tiensivu for posting this on his blog, read it here

While some of my “bleeding edge”” colleagues have been running and blogging about Windows 7 for a while now, its taken me a little longer to get my hands dirty. I decided to rebuild my Lenovo T61 yesterday and see what all the fuss was about.

The installation was seamless and quick, as you would expect. It found drivers for all my devices. I did have some trouble getting my Novatel Wireless 3G HSDPA card to work, the installation would not run at all, not even using Windows Vista compatibility mode. I downloaded the drivers off the Novatel website and managed to get the card installed that way. Works perfectly after I created a new connection through “Network and Sharing Center”

At the moment, I am very much of the opinion that it is Windows Vista with some cosmetic changes, but that’s probably unfair of me to say since I have only been using it for a few hours. I’ll be sure to report any cool new features.

Now I have to make it productive so I can get some work done when I get into the office tomorrow!

UPDATE: For information on how to move the Exchange 2010 Mail Queue, see "Exchange 2010 Moving Mail Queue"

One problem that Exchange Administrators run into after successfully transitioning to Exchange 2007 is back pressure. Back pressure is a system resource monitoring feature of the Microsoft Exchange Transport service that exists on computers that are running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that have the Hub Transport server role or Edge Transport server role installed. Important system resources, such as available hard disk drive space and available memory, are monitored. If utilization of a system resource exceeds the specified limit, the Exchange server stops accepting new connections and messages. This prevents the system resources from being completely overwhelmed and enables the Exchange server to deliver the existing messages. When utilization of the system resource returns to a normal level, the Exchange server accepts new connections and messages.

The following system resources are monitored as part of the back pressure feature:

• Free space on the hard disk drive that stores the message queue database.
• Free space on the hard disk drive that stores the message queue database transaction logs.
• The number of uncommitted message queue database transactions that exist in memory.
• The memory that is used by the EdgeTransport.exe process.
  The memory that is used by all processes.

One solution is to ensure that you have sufficient disk space for your queue database and logs. An important thing to note is that if you are making use of CCR, Exchange holds the data for the transport dumpster in the transport queue file.

Moving the queue database and logs is a fairly simple operation and can be done via the Exchange Management Shell with the Move-TransportDatabase cmdlet.

The following command will move the database and logs to D:\Queue from the default location of C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue:

Move-TransportDatabase -QueueDatabasePath: D:\Queue -QueueDatabaseLoggingPath: D:\Queue

For more information on Back Pressure, visit Microsoft Technet

I recently posted about the NZ Internet Blackout and I am happy to report that the campaign was very successful.

Thanks to an impressive campaign spearheaded by Creative Freedom NZ, New Zealand’s controversial ‘guilt upon accusation’ clause, s 92A, will be delayed and may be suspended and may be abandoned.

Read the full story here

On 12 Feb I blogged about Exchange 2007 Update Rollup 6 having been released and that it also includes a fix for the critical security issue that was published under Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-003.

I have seen a lot of posts on the internet about problems experienced after applying this update, so I recently decided to apply the update to a non-production environment. Here are my experiences.

About the environment:

• 2 x CAS servers in a NLB
• 2 x Hub transport servers
• 1 x CCR Mailbox cluster
• All servers run Server 2008 with SP1
• All servers are physical machines

 

The only "strange" thing I experienced was that the installer sits on "Creating native images for .NET assemblies..." for more than an hour.

 

After it does complete, and the servers are rebooted, everything seems to work perfectly.I had no problems with services not starting or OWA not working after applying this update.

When installing a Exchange 2007 SP1 in Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) cluster, the passive node installation fails with the following error:

“This is not a passive node. A clustered mailbox server represented by the cluster resource group [name of cluster] was found on this node.”

 

After a bit of head scratching, I realised that this occurs because after the installation of the passive node, Exchange setup asks you to restart your server thus causing the cluster to fail over.

The solution: well.. simply restart the passive node and run Exchange setup again.

 

Those of you who frequent my blog (or follow me on twitter) will know that I am strongly to any form of internet censorship. Here in Australia the government is currently trailing new ISP level filtering which threatens to reduce our internet to a state comparable to China, read more here

In New Zealand, they have recently pass some crazy copyright law that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.

Join thousands of New Zealanders (hey, I am not even kiwi!) already against this law by blacking out your Facebook photo, your websites, your Myspace pages, your Twitter account, in protest against this unjust new law that may come into effect on February 28.

I have "blacked out" my blog and twitter avatar to show my support!

for more info and to sign the petition, click here

THE Federal Government's internet filtering plan has been compared to censorship in China by one of the participants in its blacklist trials. Read full article here

Check out the NO CLEAN FEED website here

Conroy announces filtering trial participants. "The initial round of ISPs are Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1" Read more here

check out the NO CLEAN FEED website here

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1. More information about this update is available here

It is worth mentioning that this update also includes a fix for the critical security issue that was published under Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-003 on 10 February 2009.