Try new filters first

We’ve been mucking around with ADSL2 lately and it has proved to be very frustrating. The problem is trying to locate the issues. Firstly, you change all the equipment at your end. Next you upgrade everything at your end. After that you blame the ISP and give their tech support a hard time and just when you think you are going to pull all your hair out you replace the ADSL filter on the phone line and viola, everything works.

From what we can work out ADSL, operating at higher frequencies, is much more sensitive to interference than normal ADSL. So using an older ADSL filter on an ADSL2 line may not provide enough “filtering” to allow adequate reliability. If you are having issues, the first thing that we would recommend you try is buying and installing a new line filter. It worked for us.

We have also seen some cases where ADSL filters have caused issues on lines so for what it is worth go out and buy a few filters and keep ’em handy and if problems develop try a new filter first. It may save you the hours that we wasted.

There are multiple accounts with name MSSQLSvc

Having nothing better to do over the Christmas / New Year break (yeah right) we thought we might enjoy a good swing. A swing migration that is. Firstly, all credit to Jeff Middleton for his excellent guide on how to get a new SBS server working without disrupting and old SBS server. It doesn’t even have to be an SBS server but we know that it works with SBS. For information about the process see www.sbsmigration.com.

Our only criticism of Jeff’s work is that although it is very through we found it a little disjoined. To overcome this we developed our set of custom migration notes that made it clear for dummies like us. During this process we have come across a few interesting tips and issues that aren’t mentioned in Jeff’s notes.

The first of these is the following error that started appearing in the logs :

There are multiple accounts with name MSSQLSvc/:1433 of type DS_SERVICE_PRINCIPAL_NAME.

Turns out what happens was that our initial SBS Premium server ( with SQL 2000 installed ) was set to run the SQL services under a specific user. However, when we installed the new SBS server we set up the new version of SQL to run under another account. This means that two different users in the Active Directory think that they in control the SQL service accounts generating the above error.

The fix is pretty simple. Use the setspn utility to check the accounts and then change the setting so only one is registered for SQL.

Use

setspn -l account1

setspn -l account2

to check that both accounts were registered for mssqlsvc. Now use

setspn -d mssqlsvc/:1433 account2

to remove the suplicate SPN from the second account (in this case account2).

So for all you SBS swingers out there keep this in mind if you are planning to change the service accounts logins for accounts during migration.

Windows updates fail to install

Having a problem installing Windows Updates from the Microsoft web site on your XP machine? Typically they download but when they actually go to install the message you get says “failed”. If so try this :

1. On the machine with issue, locate and stop the service “Automatic Updates” in Services under Administrative Tools from Control Panel.

2. Locate C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution and delete all the contents in this folder but do not delete the folder C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution, just all files and folders underneath it.

3. Return to Services and restart “Automatic Updates”

4. Re-run Microsoft Updates from the web site. You will need to reinstall the Microsoft Update ActiveX control but updates should now download and install.

SBS2003 standard and VPN issues

We were recently trying to get VPN access to an SBS 2003 standard install. Everything we tried just didn’t work. We ran and re-ran the wizards, checked that the right ports on the hardware firewall were forwarded but still no luck. Typically, we would get the message that the VPN was connecting but during authentication it would simply timeout and we would receive a message that the VPN had been disconnected.

Turns out that the problem lay with the hardware firewall. What finally ended up resolving the problem was a simple upgrade of the firewall firmware. Once completed the VPN worked a treat. Initially you just never stop and consider that the hardware firewall ( external to SBS2003 ) could be the issue. It works and has always worked so why should it be a problem? Well, in this case it certainly was the problem.

Another handy tip we’d give is you is to always backup the configuration of the hardware firewall before you upgrade the firmware. Over time a lot of changes can be made to a hardware firewall that are note always documentated.

High processor utilization after SBS2003 Service Pack 1 installed

Recently we upgraded an SBS 2003 Standard system to Service Pack and everything went well until the following day when we received all these processor idle time warnings. When we logged in we found that indeed the processor usage was averaging above 50%. Hmmm.. we looked at the task manager and found that the process “System” was consuming an abnormal amount of processors time.

We then loaded processor monitor from sysinternals, which showed all the processes that form part of system, to help us determine where the problem lay. We didn’t install the Microsoft debugging tools like you are supposed to so we couldn’t really identify where the issue lay. Hmmm..most likely some sort of system drive needed updating.

We had updated the system BIOS before performing the Service Pack upgrade so it couldn’t be that. Our thoughts turned to the hard disk drivers being the next most likely option. When we looked at the HP drivers site for the server we were confused as to exactly what disk drivers the server had. We became hesitant about applying these sort of driver updates remotely. Hmmm…

After a little more contemplation we got the feeling that this issue was remarkably like another we had seen previously. A while back we saw issues where an SBS2003 server would slow to a crawl when it had Etrust 7.X installed. That little bug took us over 6 months to solve. The problem turned out to be an update of the Etrust realtime drivers. These updates can be found here.

We then checked the dates on the realtime CA files, INO_FLTR.SYS and INO_FLPY.SYS files located in the WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS directory and they were pretty old. Thinking that updating these was a good first step we downloaded the realtime updates from the CA web site and applied them to the SBS 2003 server. Of course applying the updates required the server to be reboot ( what doesn’t these days?).

After the reboot, guess what? The processor activity returned to normal. Who ever thought that such small files can cause problems but we suppose when you consider that any realtime antivirus works at a pretty low level most of the time on a server, it makes sense that old realtime files can cause problems.

So in summary, if you are seeing high processor activity on a SBS 2003 server with Etrust V7.X antivirus installed, our advice is to try applying the realtime updates first (you’ll need to reboot your server for them to take effect).

Wanna know why Vista took so long and will cost so much?

If you do then you should read this article about the Cost analysis of Windows Vista Copy protection. You’ll find the article at :

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Here’s the Executive summary :

“Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.”

It would seem that Microsoft has spent a hell of a lot of time and effort basically trying to appease Hollywood, who fear their “content” being stolen. The article details how the Vista will be slower and less stable for all users with “features” designed to prevent copying by a small minority. Such “features” also appear to have wide ranging effects on the whole PC industry with providers of accessories, such as graphics cards, will need to comply with these “murky” standards to get their equipment working in Vista PC’s.

The scarey part appears to be the fact that Vista will disable or degregate an interface (say video output) if it senses premium output. So let’s say that you are working on a spreadsheet while trying to watch a HD movie. If Vista doesn’t like the HD movie then guess what the whole screen may go blank as the interface is shutdown. The other interesting “feature” is the inclusion of “tilt bits”. “Tilt bits” monitor the bus for “abnormal activity” and if detected shut down the bus. This is supposed to prevent people inserting equipment in PC to by pass software protection.

We highly recommend you read the article (which has much better explanations and details) and decide for yourself. The more you start to look at what is presented here the more you see how running Vista could be a problem. What we want to know is why the hell didn’t Microsoft put all this time and effort into adding the features they initially said they would or improving security. Instead we potentially have an operating system with inclusions for a very small minority of the population but with ramifications that could affect the whole industry.

Managing SQL 2005 memory in SBS 2003 R2

When we install SBS 2003 Premium with SQL 2000 we normally go into the SQL Manager and manually limit the total amount of memory that SQL can use. This generally gives better performance for the whole SBS box. We certainly wish we could do this with Exchange, but alas no.

Now we have been trying to do the same on SBS 2003 Premium R2 which includes SQL 2005. No where could we find anywhere to manually limit the memory. After some research it urns out that tools to do this aren’t even installed on the server by default. What you need to do is go back into Control Panel | Add and Remove Programs, select SQL 2005 and Change. When the application launch you need to modify the installation to install the Management tools. You will be asked for the Premium Technology CD 2 to install the software. After what seems like a long time the tools will be installed and you can then run the Management tool to limit the maximum amount of memory SQL 2005 uses.

We’ll detail specific steps to limiting the memory in our next post but the first step is to install the SQL Management tools on SBS 2003 R2 Premium, which they aren’t installed by default.

Using Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 in a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Network

Document from Microsoft :

Brief Description
Use this document to join computers that are running Windows Vista to your Windows Small Business Server 2003 network using the “Update for Windows Small Business Server 2003: Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 compatibility (KB 926505).

Overview
The “Update for Windows Small Business Server 2003: Vista and Outlook 2007 compatibility (KB 926505)” adds support for the Client Deployment tools in Windows Small Business Server (Windows SBS), and it resolves compatibility issues for running Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 in a Windows SBS network. Use this document to join computers running Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 in your Windows SBS network.

An guess what ???? You can only install this update on your SBS 2003 server if you have already install Service Pack 1.