SBS2003 and Windows server SP2

Ok, bottom line at this point of the game is don’t do it. There seem to be plenty of things that Windows Server SP2 could break ( including network connectivity, backups, SBS console and more ). There also seems to be issues with uninstalling the sucker. Since there doesn’t appear to be any real burning need to install this service pack on your SBS server I’d just hang back and let someone else bleed to death.

Even though it appears quite a few (unknowing) folks have installed SP2 on their machines ( thanks mainly to automatic updates and WSUS ) there doesn’t really seem to be any concrete information about what or how the best way to install (or uninstall) the service pack or what needs to be upgraded before hand. It appears that things like HP broadcomm network cards needs to be upgraded but even that appears to be vague.

The hardest issues to resolve are related to certain chipsets of network cards, typically the Broadcom chipset. Here’s an overview of this and some other problems:

• VPN, network and connectivity issues. You may find issues with your ISA 2004 firewall, Outlook connectivity, Remote Desktop, or VPN (Virtual Private Network). If you have Broadcom NICs (network interface cards), first make sure you have the latest drivers installed. Then, use the Registry to disable RSS (Receive Side Scaling) and Task Offloading, as discussed in the SBS blog and the ISA Server blog.

• Help and Support Service missing. Seemingly the largest issue, and one that’s easily fixed, is that the Help and Support Service appears to be missing. The instructions to reinstall this service are discussed on the SBS blog for that platform.

• Issues caused by uninstallation of SP2. Issues caused by removing SP2 include scheduled tasks being altered so you must reenter your passwords. Also, unless you have Windows 2003 R2 or SBS 2003 R2, removing SP2 causes the rollback of MMC 2.0 to have issues. To resolve this, review the known issues in the release notes and remove the files from the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\MMC\ folder.

For the time being, hold off installing Windows Server SP2 on your SBS 2003 servers.

Getting – RTHDCPL.EXE Illegal System DLL?

And a nasty message like :

The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

(Especially on HP workstations)? See this article from Microsoft for fixes and reasons. It is caused after you install security update 925902 (MS07-017).

Another bad encounter with Windows Genuine Advantage

For those that don’t know, Windows Genuine Advantage is software that Microsoft installs on your machine, usually via Microsoft Update, that checks to see whether you have genuine Microsoft software installed. If you don’t then you receive all kinds of messages to rectify the problem. Alternatively, if you have legitimate Microsoft software, then you SHOULD have no problems.

Our experience is that more and more problems are being caused by Windows Genuine Advantage. Prior to this recent incident we had an issues where Genuine Advantage wouldn’t allow Microsoft Update to function. The solution was to install Genuine Advantage manually. A definite pain having to manually install Genuine Advantage on all the workstations for our client.

Just recently we had yet another problem where Genuine Advantage prevented us from doing our jobs. We wanted to install the latest Outlook patch because it really speeds up your system :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

However, when we went to install it we needed to run Genuine Advantage to check our software again. With no other option we ran validation and were surprised to discover that it failed. Why? because we hadn’t as yet activated a version of Microsoft Project on the machine. So we couldn’t download the patch until we first ran Project and Activated it.

Now really, if Microsoft really wants us to install Genuine Advantage then they have gotta prevent things like this were we are totally prevent us from getting on with our work. How *@&*(@*(‘ing stupid is it to prevent us from installing a patch until we activate all Microsoft software?

Come on Microsoft, stopping making it so hard.

PC vs MAC ads – a new perspective

Ok, so we have all seen those really cool Mac ads? You know the ones that show how cool Macs are and how boring, difficult, cumbersome and so forth PC’s are right? if not then click here to go to the Apple web site and view them.

Yes, they are funny and clever but are they totally true? Well..maybe not. Have a look at these send ups of the Mac ads but from a PC perspective. Click here to view the “alternate” PC vs Mac ads (from the PC’s prespective).

Enjoy.

ISA 2004 trace files

Was recently checking free space on the C: drive of a server and discovered two HUGE (>400MB) files. ISALOG.BIN and ISALOG.BAK. I wonder what these are? Well :

ISA Service Pack 2 includes an error-level tracing mechanism that operates continually in the background. If necessary, the tracing information is available for Microsoft Product Support Services. The tracing mechanism does not collect personally identifiable information.

Tracing takes place in the background, and has a negligible affect on ISA Server performance. A 400 megabyte (MB) file (%windir%\debug\isalog.bin) is created by Service Pack 2 on each computer running ISA Server services, to contain the tracing information.

We recommend that you use the default settings for this feature. However, if you want to modify the tracing mechanism, you can do so through the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ISATrace. To change the size of the file used by tracing, change the value of CircularlLogSizeMB. To disable tracing, change the BootTracing value to 0. This does not delete the file, which has to be deleted manually. After registry changes, restart the computer so that the changes take effect. If you create the registry key before installing Service Pack 2, and set the BootTracing value to 0, the tracing file will not be added during the installation, and tracing will not be enabled.

Full info – http://www.microsoft.com/technet/isa/2004/plan/sp2.mspx

Interestingly they reside on the C: drive of our server even though ISA is on D:. We can’t really see the need for them so perhaps we’ll reduce their size since space is currently a bit of a premium.

It would have been nice to know that we’d lose almost 1GB of free space by installing ISA 2004 SP2! But now we do right?

Determining whether your machine has USB 2.0

Been installing a lot of Stroragecraft disk imaging software onto machines of late. To get the best performance via an external USB device you need to ensure that the machine supports the newer USB 2.0 rather than USB 1.1. How do you know if your machine has USB 2.0? Generally, you’d just plug in the drive and see if it is slow but here’s a better way :

Right-click the My Computer icon and select Manage.
Note: Windows XP users may need to click Start to access the My Computer icon.
Click the Device Manager icon.
Click the plus (+) sign next to Universal Serial Bus Controllers.
Note: If Universal Serial Bus Controllers is not listed, there is a problem with the USB controller or the USB controller is not enabled in the computer’s BIOS. Please contact the computer or card manufacturer for updated drivers and/or for information on how to fix or enable the USB controller.

If Enhanced Host Controller and/or USB 2.0 Root Hub Device is listed, then the computer has USB 2.0 ports.
If Universal Host Controller and/or Open Host Controller is listed, then the computer has USB 1.1 ports.

You’ll find this info here.