By David Houston on Saturday, December 20, 2008 8:53 PM

With SBS 2008 the pop3 connector has been given an upgrade. In the previous version it was only possible to connect to a pop3 mail server using basic functions. But many POP3 providers have implemented security methods, including using different ports, authentication methods and using SSL to encrypt traffic.

Those new security methods are now possible to use without having to go out an buy another application to download POP3 mail to your server.

&l ... Read More »

By David Houston on Saturday, December 20, 2008 6:06 PM

I use Internet Explorer a lot and usually only put my computer in Standby mode with a number of websites open that I wanted to view the next day.

What this means is that I rarely close IE completely.

Now why is that an issue. Well it seems that that browsing some pages like FaceBook and others that reload regularly, consuming more memory. Today for example it was consuming 300MB of Memory. In my experience when IE starts using this much memory, it begins to get slower and slower, till it can no longer load new pages.

Now the real kicker. It seems that so much of Microsoft technology is integrated to use IE to render views. One such is Groove. So what happens is you can start to experience delays or unresponsiveness from your some applications as they make a request to IE to render the view. As IE fails to render the view, so does your application, but there tends to be no error or information displayed, or the application does not execute the c ... Read More »

By David Houston on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:43 PM

I have Vista on a number of machines, and yes before anyone asks I use the UAC, I like security. My main laptop is a Toshiba M700 with 4GB of RAM, and I was finding it sluggish, so it was time for a reinstall. I had just purchased a new 4GB SD card and decided to reinstall using Vista Ultimate instead of Vista Business. I also decided to not use the recovery disk supplied by with the laptop. Ok downloaded all the drivers, and apps that were available. This meant that I lost two key apps, WinDVD for Toshiba and DesktopSMS, neither of which I used. It also meant that I did not have to uninstall Symantec Antivirus, we use Nod32.

So a clean install later, more features installed and it runs like a demo and more stable than the version Toshiba provided. Please note the version on Toshiba's Recovery disks that I have are with Vista SP0 not SP1, which I would install anyway.

The combination of using the SD card with ReadyBoost and not using the OEM provided recovery dis ... Read More »

By David Houston on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:24 PM

We recently installed Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 on SBS 2008 Std. We had left the UAC enabled, when we double clicked on the MSI installer file, it would get as far as registering a service and error.

To successfully install Mail Utilities on SBS, we had to:

• Click Start - Accessories
• Right Clicked - Command Prompt
• Selected Run As Administrator
• Navigate to where the msi file is saved
• Type the full name of the msi file and press enter to run the installer with the same Administrator rights.

Hope this helps some of you.

David

By David Houston on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:07 PM

Recently we have been experiencing issues with resolving .Co.UK domain, even though the server is set to use the root hints.

The SBS and DNS teams have been notified and hopefully there will be a resolution soon, until then you could set your server to use DNS forwarding and direct them to redirect requests to your ISP's DNS servers or use an open option like OpenDns.

I will update this post when there is an official update.

By David Houston on Monday, September 08, 2008 1:01 PM

If you have users that need to use Outlook Web Access for long periods of time without being logged off after being inactive for a while, you will need to make a change to the registry to accomplish this. Warning - Editing the registry can make your server unbootable -Warning

 

Exchange 2003 OWA.

Change the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA\TrustedClientTimeout

This is a hex a decimal number so input your time appropriately

 

Exchange 2007 OWA.

Change the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange OWA\PrivateTimeout

Further in ... Read More »

By David Houston on Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:07 AM

I have recently had an update the the blog post "Expansys, HTC and grey market mobile phones". I have been issued a full refund and I am awaiting the cheque before bying the HTC Touch Pro, which for those interested will not be through Expansys.

Please not that there is a Forum post over at SBS Ireland with regards to grey market stock and Expansys and it seems that I am not the only one, so please be careful.

 

Thankfully I did get the refund but others have been stuck with unsupported phones and deserve better.

Please post to the SBS Ireland forum if you have been stung.

Thank you
David

... Read More »

By David Houston on Sunday, September 07, 2008 12:44 AM

I have just spent the last hour or so going over the sessions and events for the TechED event. The lineup looks very good for those in the Enterprise, but this is what gets to me personally, is that there seems to be only one session for all WESS which would include SBS, and another for EBS. So only two sessions for products that are launching only days after the event. To add insult to injury, TechED Australia has dedicated a complete day to WESS, and there had been a dedicated session just for SBS at TechED North America.

This to me makes no sense what so ever. There is a big wish for information on both SBS and EBS, and talking to those that are enterprise IT guys they do want to know more about it.

An event that will have over 4000 attendees, and not to avail of this turn out to inform them properly about SBS and EBS is incredible and seems to show a lack of understanding by Microsoft. To get the information out about the the two biggest Microsoft products t ... Read More »

By David Houston on Saturday, August 09, 2008 11:51 PM

Vlad Mazek has coined the phrase SPF, or Single Point of Failure, for IT consultants. These are companies that have only one person on staff and have no real backup personnel, or partners that could help run their company if they were hit by a bus.

Following on from this, the most common connection with most of these businesses is the lack of documentation, this includes:

• Network Documents
• System Changes
• Network Diagrams
• Client Information
• Business Accounts
• Business Usernames and Passwords.

Why is this information important when selling your business?

If you buy a company that does not have this information, you will have to a) have to pay for the business, b) then invest your time in learning the network and then developing your own documentation.

Part B can be an investment of a ... Read More »

By David Houston on Saturday, July 19, 2008 2:04 PM

Just recently I got the new HTC Touch Diamond, and was very impressed with the look of the device.

There was a few things that got to me though:

• TouchFlo performance
• Unable to connect to a Wireless Network
• Weak Network Signal
• Other performance issues

a little research showed that newer firmware would resolved the issue. So I went to the HTC website and tried to register the phone. No luck, emailed their support, and thought a minor glitch. A week past, and I had not heard from them, so another email goes out. Another week later and I decide to call them. On the phone to a very nice lady, and she unfortunately had to give me the bad new. The phone that I was given, even though advertised for Ireland and the UK was in fact a grey market import from Asia, and HTC would not support these phones.

 

What does this mean?

It means ... Read More »