Enable Wake On Magic Packet

To begin we need to make sure we have all the settings for Wake on Lan turned on. There are several locations in which you will need to go to and configure or turn on a feature. If any of these steps are skipped then WoL will not work.

By Default most Ethernet Ports are set to have this enabled by default but still check to make sure they are enabled.

First we need to go into the properties of the Ethernet Port that is currently active and in use. Right click the adapter in use and select properties. This is open a new dialog box, and from here select “Configure”

Under “Advanced” enable “Wake on Magic Packet”

Under Power Management check all three boxes

Once everything is enable for the Ethernet port we need to install the Windows service for WoL

Open “Control Panel” and then go to “Programs and Features”

Once in the Program and Features window on the left side click “Turn Windows Features on or off”

Next install the TCP/IP service “Simple TCPIP services” by clicking the check box next to it

Next turn on the service we just installed by going into the Window Services located in the administrator tools.

Finally open UDP for Port 9 within the Windows firewall settings.

In control panel select “Windows Firewall” and from there select “Advanced Settings” on the left.

Click “Inbound Rules” then select “New Rule”. This will open the New Rule wizard.

Next select to create a new Port rule, then apply the rule to UDP, and specify port 9.

Once the setup is complete ensure that the Wake on Lan feature is turned on in the BIOs and in the router port forward Port 9 to the address of the machine with WoL enabled.

For users to wake up a PC with WoL setup they need to send a Magic Packet to wake the machine up. Most routers have the capability of sending these magic packets otherwise you can do this threw the command prompt or by using a third party application.

What is required to send magic packets are:

• MAC Address
• IP Address
• Port #

In SBS2011 the most common problem/complaints are:

- Home Pages being changed to http://companyweb

- Folder redirection not happening correctly

To see which Group Policies are defined:

- On the server, administrator tools –> group policy management.  The policies will be listed beneath domain.  If you right click on one, Enforced will either be checked or unchecked.  Unchecked means that is it defined, but not enforced.  You would globally edit the policy here.

To update the Group Policy on a specific machine

- Start –> Run, ‘gpupdate /force’, log off if prompted.

- On the server you would do this to make sure the changes you have made recently in the Group Policy manager are available to the clients

- On the clients, it forces the client to pull down the latest policies.  It can take up to 3 times running the command

To see which policies are currently applied to a client/server machine

- Start –> Run, ‘rsop.msc’

fix blackberry admin web app on a server. BESX 5.0.3, server 2003.

set the following reserved ports and then restart the listed services afterward

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Reserved Ports

48855-48858

45588-45588

49955-49955

45599-45599

Restart DNS

Restart BES Admin service

wait 5 minutes

Symptoms:  After uninstalling ISA 2000 or 2004, all inbound traffic to that server is blocked.  No file share access, no ping response, etc.

Solution: After rebooting run the following command to turn off a hidden service

Command – “net stop ipnat”

When you use mail.domain.com/remote to log in via remote desktop instead of setting up port forwarding. SBS has a way of automating this process. Remember to add users to each machine after you add it here so they can log in.

To connect a client computer to the network by using the internal Web site

1. On the client computer, open a Web browser.
2. In the address bar, type http://connect.
3. Click Start Connect Computer Wizard.
4. Follow the instructions in the Connect Computer Wizard to do the following:
• Verify computer requirements.
• Specify a user name and password.
• Specify or verify the name and description of the client computer.
• Assign users to the client computer.
• Move existing user data and settings.
• Assign the level of use for users of the client computer.

Upgrade to one of the following versions:

6.0.12 or higher
6.5.5 or higher

These versions increase the time allowed for the copy process to five (5) minutes.

If this issue persists increase the copy timeout using the following steps:

1. Run regedit.
2. Create the following DWORD registry key:

64 bit Operating System: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Symantec\SMSMSE\<version>\Server\DefsUpdateTimeInSecs
32 bit Operating System: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\SMSMSE\<version>\Server\DefsUpdateTimeInSecs

NOTE:  Replace <version> with the version of SMSMSE installed.  For example on a 32-bit system with 6.5 installed the key is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\SMSMSE\6.5\Server\DefsUpdateTimeInSecs.

3. Set the value of the key to be the timeout in seconds.  For example to set a ten (10) minute timeout set the value to 600.
4. Close Regedit.
5. Restart the following SMSMSE service:

Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange

Symptoms: Win7 machines appears to take a very long time to log into their desktop.

Search Terms: Win7 x64, windows 7 64 bit, slow log on, slow logon, slow domain, long welcome screen

Fixes:

Solution 1: Registry Hack

1. Run gpedit.msc.
2. Go to computer configuration.
3. Go to Administrative templates.
4. Go to System.
5. Go to User profiles.
6. Enable “Set maximum wait time for the network if a user has a roaming user profile or remote home directory” and set to 0 seconds
7. Source: blog.bigsmoke.us/2010/03/17/fixing-extremely-slow-domain-logon-windows-7

Solution 2: Desktop Background

1. Change the background from a solid color to an image.
2. If a solid color is necessary, create a 1×1 pixel of the color and save it as a bmp and use that image
3. Source: http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks/correcting-the-slow-log-on-to-your-windows-7-system/

 “My server is slow”

A lot of the general server slowness I’ve been seeing recently has been with clients who use SQL daily.

How can you tell it’s SQL slowing the server down?

Go into the processes in task manager and look for sqlservr.exe. If it’s taking up a lot of RAM, then it usually is part of the problem. For example, theirs is running at 2gb total between 2 processes. Normally it should be under 500mb but it depends on the system. There are cases when this is not true and they are fully functional with huge databases, but it is something to consider as part of diagnosing a slow server.

Open SQL Databases

Run MSSMSE (Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express) and connect to a database. Sometimes they are listed automatically. Server type should be Database Engine. Server name should be server_name\database_name such as APPSERVER\SBSMONITORING. Authentication should be Windows Authentication. Sometimes you can’t find the right names in the GUI and you can literally type them in and see if they open. You can also go into Services and check for database names in the SQL and MSSQL areas (for example, SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) would be one). Sometimes you can click the dropbar for Server name and go to Browse and find them that way as well.

Once you connect, expand Databases to see the names. You can ignore anything that says System, master, tempdb, model, or msdb.

Shrinking SQL Databases

Shrinking databases is sometimes a good thing. It acts like defragmenting a hard drive and can help the server get to data quicker and easier. This should be done on large log files or databases if there are complaints about a program being slow.

First, view the log files by clicking on the database name and then clicking the New Query button. Type dbcc sqlperf(logspace) and then press the Execute button. Below the log file sizes are listed in the results tab. Anything over 20mb can be considered large. Take note of the names of the large databases.

If any log files are large, then run the following on it, replacing database_name with each database name:

• backup log database_name
• with truncate_only
• dbcc shrinkdatabase(database_name, truncateonly)
• Run dbcc sqlperf(logspace) again to see the new size, it should be under 1mb.

You can also use the GUI in MSSMSE to shrink the databases themselves. They can take minutes to hours to complete, depending on size, so give yourself adequate time to do this after hours, or just stick to weekends.

Right-click on the database name and go to Tasks, Shrink, Database. Click OK and let it execute. It should disappear when it completes. If you get any errors, it might be too large to shrink or busy at the moment. Like defragmenting, sometimes it requires space to shrink so you may have to increase the Initial Size and try again, which will be covered below in Optimizing. You can try again after shrinking the files. Right-click on the database name and go to Tasks, Shrink, Files. Under File Type, choose Data or Log and then click OK to shrink them. Make sure to go back and do BOTH Data AND Log. Do these same steps for each database that is necessary.

Optimizing Databases For Speed

There are a couple settings that will make databases slower or are bad in combination. Normally these settings can be ignored for small databases (under 50mb) since they don’t make a huge difference in speed for those, but large databases can be very slow because of them.

First, open MSSMSE and open the appropriate connections. Right-click on the database name and go to Properties. Under Options, we want to set Auto Close to False and Auto Shrink to False. Auto Close keeps the database closed between access and can make it very slow when it is constantly opening and closing. Auto Shrink is good for saving space on the hard drive but it can slow down a server if every time it expands the database to make room, this process shrinks it back down and they battle for size.

Next, go to Files. Here you can change the Initial Size (MB) to larger if you are unable to shrink a database down (see above) because the database is 500mb but it says 25mb as initial size. Increase it to over 500mb in that case so it have some room to shrink down. Normally this setting can be ignored. Autogrowth is the focus of this section. I suggest setting the Data File Type to By 100mb, unrestricted growth and the Log File Type to By 10mb, 25mb, 50mb, or 100mb in either restricted or unrestricted. If the log file is very small (< 5mb), then it doesn’t need to increase by 100mb each time, 10mb would be fine.

Corrupt SBS Monitoring Database

In MSSMSE, open SBSMonitoring, expand databases, right click it and go to Properties. If the size is over 2gb then it might be corrupt. Once it reaches 4.5gb it will be impossible to shrink down, and you know for sure it is corrupt.

Every SBS 2008 server has the database SBSMonitoring running, which can get corrupted and grow up to 4gb big. As your database is completely filled up, then you can replace it with a clean empty one, to install your new clean database, please follow these steps:

1. Run services.msc.

2. Stop the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service), SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service (To be able to unlock monitoring database files)

3. Change the name of those 2 files in case you will use them in the future:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring.mdf

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log.ldf

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring-bak.mdf

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log-bak.ldf

4. Download http://cid-6ca40dd0d4c9caa6.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/sbsmonitoring.zip file. (I have these files now if we need them in the future)

5. Unzip the zip file and copy those two files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ folder

Note: you don’t need to do detach or attach database in SQL Management Studio. And that database has already been tuned by the SQL command above.

6. Start the SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service

7. Start the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service)

In 2010 you can add the “From: “ option in the settings. Problem solved if you have the permissions as listed below.

In 2007 (exchange) things run differently. You have to log into the server and give yourself send-as and full access permission in the exchange management console. Just right click the user mailbox and it should be in there.

After a certain mystery period of time, the changes will take place. It can be several hours in some cases and I thought it didn’t work up until it suddenly began working.

Next, log into OWA using IE which is usually at https://mail.domain.com/owa. Log in as your main user. On the top right you should be able to click your name and then enter another mailbox. Type the name you want, such as “bmurray” and then click Open.

It should open in a new tab and show you that mailbox. Any replying or sending from here will be from that mailbox. Test sending mail and if you get a permissions error then it could be that it needs more time or you need to add yourself under send-as in the server.

Useful commands that may also need to be run: (I ran these first and it did not work, but it could have been delayed so I’m not sure which part of this is necessary)

Get-mailboxserver <servername> | add-adpermission –user <service account> -accessrights GenericRead, GenericWrite -extendedrights Send-As, Receive-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin

Note: <service account> is your user and doesn’t need the <>. Same with <servername>.

Add-MailboxPermission -identity “user” -user “serviceaccount” -AccessRights FullAccess

Note: ‘serviceaccount’ is the person who wants permission on the mailbox for ‘user’

When monitoring a Small Business Server if there are reports of numerous slow downs which can be caused when the database is full or nearly full. When the database logs are full there will be

1. Run services.msc.
2. Stop the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service), SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service (To be able to unlock monitoring database files)
3. Change the name of those 2 files in case you will use them in the future:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring.mdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log.ldf
to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring-bak.mdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log-bak.ldf
4. Download http://cid-6ca40dd0d4c9caa6.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/sbsmonitoring.zip file.
5. Unzip the zip file and copy those two files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ folder
Note: you don’t need to do detach or attach database in SQL Management Studio. And that database has already been tuned by the SQL command above.
6. Start the SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service
7. Start the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service)