Welcome to this world, I will be your guide!

SBS 2008 POP3 Connector and Gmail

david@damecomputers.com — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:53:20 GMT

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.

If you want to configure for a Gmail account.

POP server: pop.gmail.com

Username: Username@gmail.com

Tick Secure Socket Layer

Password: Type your normal Gmail password

Windows Small Business Server e-mail account: Select the account you want to have receive the mail from the gmail account.

Note, from what I can tell you can not download mail to a distribution group, which you could do in the SBS 2003 version.

Your Computer becomes unresponsive

david@damecomputers.com — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:06:57 GMT

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 command request.

The simplest solution is to close all Internet Explorer windows, open task manager and make sure that there are no IExplorer.exe processes left running.

The other solution is to reboot, which will clear your memory for you.

I have no real idea why IE can not release the memory, but there does seem to be something there.

Just to note, I can reproduce this on Vista, XP Pro, IE6 and IE7

Have a great Stuffed Turkey Season!

Making my Vista machine fly!

david@damecomputers.com — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:43:03 GMT

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 disks has made a huge difference, the machines runs so much faster and is stabler than it was before, which makes my life easier.

If you can get your hands on an original Vista disk and not an OEM disk if you want to reinstall, also make sure it is the latest SP, which at this time is Service Pack One. SP2 is in beta.

Exclaimer on SBS 2008

david@damecomputers.com — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:24:01 GMT

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

SBS 2008 DNS issue

david@damecomputers.com — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:07:28 GMT

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.

Changing the default log off time of Outlook Web Access

david@damecomputers.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:01:32 GMT

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 information for exchange 2007 is available here

Hope this helps

David

HTC Touch Diamond, Expansys and Grey Market phones - Update

david@damecomputers.com — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:07:19 GMT

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

TechED EU 2008 ITPro unWESS friendly

david@damecomputers.com — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:44:11 GMT

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 to be released this year can be summed up as INCREDIBLE!

It seems that Microsoft have lost focus on the SMB market, and have recently taken a number of actions that will alienate their partners.

In the next few posts I am going to dissect some of Microsoft recent descision that have impacted the way that I see them and relate to them as a partner.

Thank you,

David

Is your IT Business sellable?

david@damecomputers.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:51:12 GMT

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 considerable amount of time, especially if it is a large network that you need to document.

This leads onto a question of if your business could survive if you "where hit by a bus". I intend to post on this topic as it seems to be an one that few small businesses could do.

Let me know your thoughts.

David

Expansys, HTC and grey market mobile phones

david@damecomputers.com — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:04:36 GMT

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 that HTC will not support the phone in Europe as the phone was not meant for this market. I can register the phone on the Hong King section of their website, but I would also have to call Hong Kong for any support. Not my ideal.

Am I the only one that this happened to?

No it appears that Expansys has sold these grey market phones to a number of different regions, Ireland, United Kingdom and Australia are three countries that I know of.

I am in the process of getting an RMA for a misadvertised phone and will keep this site up to date on how that goes.