Take-Aways from a Breakfast Event on Exchange 2010

Yesterday, I spent the morning at an event hosted by Quickstart, EMC and ExtraTeam on Exchange 2010 and Unified Communications.  Not only did they have a great breakfast laid out for those of us who attended event, I picked up a few tidbits about the new versions of these Microsoft products.  The Exchange portion of morning was lead by Mike Sneeringer, who is currently the only person in the world holding both the Microsoft Certified Master in Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 - very cool.

If you are an Exchange administrator, you'll appreciate some of these features:

• Role Based Access Control - enables administrators to delegate permissions to responsible users based on job function without giving them access to the entire Exchange management interface. Tasks such as performing multi-mailbox searches no longer have to be the sole responsibility of Exchange Admins, allowing your organization take better advantage of features like legal hold and mailbox searches without involving the IT department.
• Multi-Mailbox Search - allows designated users (like a legal team) a web-based tool for searching across mulitple mailboxes.  This applies to online archive as well as the main mailbox.
• Legal Hold - A legal hold preserves deleted mailbox items and records changes made to mailbox items. Deleted and changed items are returned in a discovery search.
• Improved Transport Rules - will allow for greater control of how mail flows both within your organization and to outside contacts.
• Online Mailbox Moves - this is available for 2007 to 2010 migrations only, but will allow users access to their mailboxes during migration from one database to another. For migrations from 2003 mailboxes must be taken offine.

In addition to some great improvement from the mail administration side, end users will appreciate some of these improvements:

• Delivery reports - provides access to message delivery information for both end users and administrators to help answer questions common questions about mail status.  Great for offices that have multiple locations and multiple email servers.
• MailTips - I can't describe how helpful mail tips can be any better than this blog post by the Microsoft Exchange team. You'll never accidentally "reply to all" for an email you where were BCC'd again.
• Online Archive - Instead of using PSTs to store archive mail, users can take advantage of an online archive separate from their regular mailbox.  With SP1, that archive can even be stored in a different database.
• List Moderation - Allow designated moderators to approve messages before they are sent out to common distribution lists.  This combined with MailTips will probably reduce a lot of common interoffice email mistakes!

Finally, Unified Communications Server can bring your teams together more than ever before, as well as make it easier to manage voice mails and emails together.  With the ability to integrate with other common applications like Office and SharePoint, knowing the "presence" and availabilty of other coworkers can streamline communications and improve productivity. 

Overall, the event was a morning well spent.  While the Unified Communcations offerings aren't something I'm looking at, the Exchange 2010 features just make me look forward to getting there sooner.  Also, EMC has some additional features regarding eDiscovery with their SourceOne product that could complement your Exchange infrastructure depending on your needs.

Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

Came across some handy keyboard shortcuts for Windows 7, courtesy of Brainstorm, Inc.  Check out their website for some other free Windows 7 tips.

• Windows Key – Opens and closes the Start menu, so its a quick way to get to Instant Search
• Windows Key + Left or Right arrow – Snaps the active windows to the right or left side of the screen
• Windows Key + Home – Minimizes all but the active window
• Windows Key + M – Minimizes all open windows
• Windows Key + Shift + M – Restores all open windows
• Windows Key + D – Shows the desktop
• Windows Key + R – Opens the RUN dialog window
• Windows Key + U – Opens the Ease of Access Center
• Windows Key + T – Scrolls through items on your Taskbar
• Windows Key + (+/-) – Zooms in/out; opens Magnifier
• Windows Key + L – Locks the computer

Some keyboard shortcuts use keys that are embedded on a laptop keyboard (like HOME), I tend to avoid.  It doesn’t seem like much of a shortcut when I have to deal with the “Fn” key.  As for that Windows + L combination?  It’s going to take a long time for me to break the habit of using Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Looking for User Training for Windows and Office? Check out ELF.

Looking for a way to provide tips about Windows 7 or Office at your office? The Microsoft Enterprise Learning Framework gives you fast access to information that you can share with users regarding the deployment and usage of Windows client operating systems and office applications.  Walk through a few steps, select the OS and applications that you need, and then review the list of articles and short videos that you can share as you deploy new software.

All the links lead to content that is available on online, but its neatly organized in a way you can share with information workers in your organization.  According to the Microsoft site, you can use ELF for a variety of purposes:

1. As part of your deployment communication plan. Select the timeframe (for example, a month before deployment, a week after deployment) and category of employee (for example, Information Workers) and then generate a sample e-mail with topic recommendations for your employees.
2. To identify a few key learning topics for a particular feature, such as Search. For example, you could include links to Windows Online Help topics about the Search feature on your corporate intranet site.
3. Any time, to get ideas for tips-and-tricks topics for newsletters, your intranet support site or lunch-and-learn presentations. 

Finally, need documentation for some of your own applications so you can share tips with others?  Try using the Problem Steps Recorder that's included with Windows 7.  Not only a great way to troubleshoot issues, you can use the tool to capture screen shots with captions that you can use as a starting point for your own instructional documents.

SceCli Warning: Event 1202 on Windows XP

Here's an error that was found on two of our workstations recently:

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: SceCli
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1202
Computer: COMPUTERNAME


Description:
Security policies were propagated with warning. 0x4b8 : An extended error has occurred.

For best results in resolving this event, log on with a non-administrative account and search http://support.microsoft.com for "Troubleshooting Event 1202's".


The warning was repeated several times a day and it looked like the machine might not be process all our group policies correctly.   A check in the "%windir%\security\logs\winlogon" log file repeatedly showed "Error 1208: An extended error has occurred. Error creating database."

I did a little searching around on the web and suspected that the local security database, secedit.sdb was damaged.  There were a couple of KB articles that danced around what seemed to be going on (KB278316 and KB818464), but either the OS indicated wasn't XP or I wasn't seeing all the errors listed.  But they seemed promising, so I tried one on each workstation.

Option 1 - ESENTUTL /p


Run ESENTUTL to repair the database using the command line below.  Follow with the ever popular "gpupdate /force".

esentutl /p %windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb

Later, I came across a mention in KB884018 that indicated using ESENTUTIL /P on Windows XP could result in tattooing some previous GPO settings in the registry, but that wasn't a big concern for me.  We don't often rely on GPOs to rollback to their previous settings if they are removed, we usually actively change each setting if we want to alter a GPO that was previously set. I not worried that I did anything that will affect our future policies, however if you are skeptical, use the next option instead.
Option 2 - Rebuild the Security Database

1. Open the %SystemRoot%\Security folder, create a new folder, and then name it "OldSecurity".
2. Move all of the files ending in .log from the %SystemRoot%\Security folder to the OldSecurity folder. (You may need to use SAFE MODE to copy all of these, however I just skipped the ones that I couldn't copy.)
3. Find the Secedit.sdb file in the %SystemRoot%\Security\Database folder, and then rename this file to "Secedit.old".
4. Click Start, click Run, type mmc, and then click OK.
5. Click Console, click Add/Remove Snap-in, and then add the Security and Configuration snap-in.
6. Right-click Security and Configuration and Analysis, and then click Open Database.
7. Browse to the %TEMP% folder, type Secedit.sdb in the File name box, and then click Open.
8. When you are prompted to import a template, click Setup Security.inf, and then click Open.
9. Copy %TEMP%\Secedit.sdb to %SystemRoot%\Security\Database.
10. Reboot.

This was a longer process that the first option, but seemed to be just as effective. As I mention in the steps, I didn't bother with using safe mode to ensure I could copy or rename all the files.  There seemed to be no ill effects with doing that, at least not in the short term.


Finally, I added a rule to System Center Essentials 2010 to watch for this error message on workstations in the future. I'd like to know sooner than later if some of the workstations in our organization are having issues processing GPOs.  We aren't sure exactly why those two machines had issues, though they have had viruses removed from them in the past.  Perhaps trashing parts of the local security database was a result of some malware action.

Don't miss these Upcoming Events

PacITPros will be having there monthly meeting on August 3rd.  PacITPros member Sam Bowne will be presenting a recap of items that came out at Defcon and Blackhat. Doug Spindler will be talking about security items related to the recent Microsoft Zero day exploits that have come out.  Don't forget to RSVP!

Coming up in early November, there is the SharePoint Intelligence one-day conference in Santa Clara.  For $350, spend the day attending a variety of sessions and networking with others involved with SharePoint. I'm hoping I can score a little training budget from the office! If you are in Southern California, the event will be held in mid-September.