Disctronics's Blog

Migrate from Server 2003 to Server 2008

disctronics — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:01:57 +0000

I decided to go through a test of this migration because I don’t do it often. Of course this all worked great because they were never in production and were freshly built right before I did the migration.

Virtual Computers: Server 2003 R2 & Server 2008

Make sure your W2K3 domain functional level is set for ”Windows Server 2003″

Open “Active Directory Users and Computers”
Right click Domain and select “Raise domain functional level”
From the drop down select “Windows Server 2003″
Click “Raise”

Prep your W2k3 server for the 2k8 forest

From the Server 2008 disk, copy the folder “adprep” from the “Sources” folder to the “C:” drive of the W2k3 server
Open CMD on and type “cd c:\adprep” and hit “Enter”
Type in “adprep /domainprep” and hit enter

Join Server 2008 to the domain
On the W2K8 server run “dcpromo” from the command window and follow the wizard
Transfer the FSMO roles (I used the command line to do this)

I followed this site http://www.petri.co.il/transferring_fsmo_roles.htm

Change both DNS server entries to point to your W2k8 server
Test that the servers are communicating/replicating

I created/deleted users on both servers and watched the changes replicate

Demote W2k3 server

Run “dcpromo” from the command line on the W2k3 server and it will remove the A/D services
Remove the server from the domain by joining it to a workgroup
Deleted the server from the “Active directory Sites and Services”

Sites -> Default-first-site -> Server -> right click the W2K3 server and selected “Delete”

Reconfigure your DHCP server on your new server, or do an export/import

Here is Microsoft’s article on how to do the export/import: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962355

I rebooted both servers and they seemed alright afterwords.

Reset Cisco PIX 506E Password & Reset to Factory Defaults

disctronics — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:40:47 +0000

Well I’m learning Cisco and I feel that is a skill to always know. So today I was tasked with cleaning up a couple PIX 506E firewalls that we had lying around. Here is the step by step I followed because I didn’t know any passwords for it.

Ready your Cisco

Plug Cisco cable from “console” port on the PIX to serial port on computer. (Took me a while to track down a serial port on our computers)
Plug network cable from switch into Interface 0

Found out that Windows 7 does not have Hyperterminal anymore. Found a guide that had me copy two files from Windows XP and put them into a single folder. Now I have Hyperterminal on my computer & USB drive.

C:\Program Files\Windows NT\hypertrm.exe
C:\WINODWS\system32\hypertrm.dll

Open Hyperterminal and make only one change, BAUD: 9600 and click “OK”
Turn on your Cisco and now you should see lots of text scrolling.
Look for the section “Cisco PIX Firewall Version” & note down the version
Go to http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/110/34.shtml and download the correct Binary file as related to your Firewall Version NOT BIOS VERSION
Download TFTP Server software

I found that SolarWinds’ Free TFTP server was the easiest to use.
Download and install.
Open the configuration and change its home folder to the folder where your Cisco Download is located
My server didn’t start automatically, so in that same window I started the service.
I had to turn off my Windows Firewall too

Turn off your Cisco and then turn it back on. When it boots, it will hang at a spot with a 10 second countdown. Hit “ESC” key and you will be prompted with “monitor>” after a bit of text.
Type in the following, substituting the variables, without the quotes, for your network:

monitor>interface 0
monitor>address “Cisco IP Address”
monitor>server “TFTP Server address”
monitor>file “Cisco downloaded file name”
monitor>gateway “Network default gateway”
monitor>ping “TFTP Server address”
monitor>tftp
Cisco should reboot after loading the software
Once it is back up type “enable” and hit enter
There is no password so just hit enter again
type “config terminal” and hit enter
type “config factory” and hit enter
say “Y” to all the prompts
once done, type “wr mem” and hit enter. This saves the information to the memory
type “reload” and hit enter. This will restart the device and now it’s clean.

Outlook 2010: Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open Outlook window. The set of folders could not be opened.

disctronics — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:02:07 +0000

I came across this at a customer. They use Outlook 2010 and their parent company supplies them with an Exchange account but does not support Outlook. So we get it to work where we can. Well we got this error: Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open Outlook window. The set of folders could not be opened. The server is not available. Contact your administrator if this condition persists. So with no support from “mom” I went to Microsoft. Here is there fix and it worked for me:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\RPC (I had to create the “RPC” key first)
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type DefConnectOpts, and then press ENTER.
Right-click DefConnectOpts, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
Exit Registry Editor.

Outlook proofing tools does not work

disctronics — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:19:22 +0000

I had a client install Outlook 2010 on machines that were running an older version of Office. I found that the proofing tools did not work. Turns out, they wont. Here is a link to Microsoft’s site explaining it a bit more:

Outlook 2010

Outlook 2007

DistributedCOM error on Servers

disctronics — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:39:32 +0000

I get errors in my servers that used to make no sense. But thanks to a bit of research, they are not so tough to tackle.

Here is an example of the error:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with
CLSID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} and APPID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1}
to the user domain\username SID (X-X-X-xx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxx) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

How to fix:

- “Window button” + “R”
- type “Regedit” click “OK”
- Ctrl+”F”
- paste YOUR APPID from the event error
- Click “Find Next”
- When it brings you to a hit, copy the new APP ID from the registry and start from the beginning of the registry and do a find for the new string.
- Keep hitting F3 until you get to a hit with “AccessPermission” + “LaunchPermission” in the right pane
- Right click on the key in the left pane and select “Permissions…”
- Click “Advanced…”
- Click “Owner” tab
- make the “Current Owner” “Administrators” (it’s already in the list)
- Click “OK”
- Click on “Administrators” and put a check in “Allow” for “Full Control”
- Click “OK”
- “Windows button” + “R”
- Type “dcomcnfg”
- Expand: Console Root -> Component Services -> My computer -> DCOM Config
- Find your app from the Registry and right click
- Select Properties, then the Security Tab
- Click “Edit” under “Launch and Activation Permissions”
- Add the user mentioned in the error log or “Local Services” & “Network Services”
- Click OK twice and close all your open Windows.

It should just work from here, but I always restart the computer when done.

The credit goes to this site. It’s what gave me the most useful information.

Outlook error: Cannot open the Outlook window. Invalid XML, the view cannot be loaded

disctronics — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:51:18 +0000

I ran into this at a customer. The following ran in the Run window fixed the issue:
Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

FYI: iPhone/iOS4 does not support 3DES for VPN

disctronics — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:21:02 +0000

FYI: iPhone/iOS4 does not support 3DES for L2TP VPN connections. It will do AES-128 though.

.EXE files don’t work from “Run”

disctronics — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:56:31 +0000

After cleaning up an infection I found that I couldn’t run .exe files from the “Run” command. A little bit of digging around lead me to this post. There, Vishal aka VG who is the founder of AskVG.com, wrote a great article about editing the registry. I followed what he had written and it got my client working.

Thanks!

Windows update Error number: 0×80070424

disctronics — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:40:28 +0000

I ran into a problem where I couldn’t run Windows updates on a Windows XP computer. When I would go to Internet Explorer and run updates, it would through an error immediately. I found a post that stated:
Click on Start -> Run
and paste the command below and enter
%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\WUAUENG.DLL

Here is the link

When I ran that command, I got an error that asked what to open regsvr32.exe with?

So, to get around this. Go the the DLL in question. Double click it. When it asks what to open it with, select regsvr32.exe and you should be on easy street.

“trust relationship between the workstation and domain has been broken”

disctronics — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:04:59 +0000

I had a client computer that worked just fine one day, and on the next day they could not log into the domain. They were getting this error, “trust relationship between the workstation and domain has been broken”.

Workstation is Windows 7
Server is 2008.

If you look through the event logs, you will see Event ID 3210. The quick fix is to rejoin the computer to the domain. Additionally, there is a hot-fix through Microsoft, but you have to contact them for it.