Matthew Huynh Blog Site

Media Center PC powering on by itself?

2006-03-02T07:22:00Z

Do you have an NVidia network card?

This site might help:

http://www.meedio.com/forum/post-212403.html&sid=26325f8c90def5b85fcb1300090425af

In short the article tells you to uncheck "'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in it's network card property.

Setting up a backup email server for Small Business Server 2003

2006-03-01T11:19:00Z

This article is for SBS users who want to have a backup mail server just in case you SBS server has an outage (power, internet troubles, hardware, etc). Most ISPs will offer some backup mail solution for a fee, but if you have another exchange site or maybe another business with SBS you can do this for free, if both businesses are willing.

Terminology:

SBS Server - Small Business Server 2003 where you email is directly delivered to
backup mail server - Another SBS server or Exchange server where email will get delivered to if your SBS Server is offline
MX - Mail Exchange record
YourDomain.com - fill this in with whatever email domain you own

First step is to get MX records added - You can request to your domain name registrar or whoever hosts your DNS records to add a second MX record with a lower priority. Your primary MX record will point to your SBS server with a priority of 0 or 10. Add a second MX record that will point to the backup mail server's hostname or IP with a priority of 30. If this is setup properly mail going to bill@yourdomain.com will try to contact the SBS exchange server first. If it can't contact the SBS exchange server then it will try the backup mail server with the lower priority. Thus ensuring that mail will get delivered to the SBS server if it's up and running.

Second step is to configure the backup mail server to accept mail for yourdomain.com and hold it until the SBS server request the mail -

From Server Management (SBS), expand Advanced Management, YourDomain(Exchange), right click on Connectors, select new -> SMTP Connector...
Name the connector something
Add a local bridgehead, select the local exchange server's name
Under the Delivery Options tab, select Queue mail for remote triggered delivery (no account is added for ETRN)
Under the Address Space tab, add an SMTP address of YourDomain.com, cost 1
Check Allow messages to be relayed to these domains

Mail to YourDomain.com will now get queued up when delivered to this backup mail server.

Third step is to configure your SBS Server to download the queued mail - This step assumes that you are getting your mail directly to your SBS server

From Server Management (SBS), expand Advanced Management, YourDomain(Exchange), Connectors, right click on SmallBusiness SMTP connector, select properties
Under the Advanced tab, select "Request ETRN/TURN from different server"
Enter the host name or IP address of the backup mail server (use host name is your backup mail server is using a dynamic IP)
Specify a schedule of how often you want to check for mail on the backup mail server (I do every 4 hours since I don't anticipate my SBS server being down very often)
Select "Issue ETRN", click Domains... button, add the email domain that you want delivered.

You should now be setup to download queued mail from the backup mail server. Most of the time there will be no mail to download since your SBS server will be up and running, thus receiving all the email to YourDomain.com. In the case of any long outages to your SBS server, you're email won't be lost.

ATI Radeon x700 and Media Center PC Live TV pixelation

2005-11-24T02:10:00Z

This might be helpful to someone who has a similar problem. Recent updates in MCE2005 caused my live TV picture to be pixelated at the top. I just upgraded my ATI drivers to the newest and that solved the problem.

ISA Standard to ISA Enterprise

2005-06-08T02:12:00Z

Q: Hi. If you purchase ISA Standard, can you upgrade to ISA Enterprise? If so, how? Please advise as soon as possible. Thanks...

A: Yes, there is, via Export/Import.

Upgrading from ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition The upgrade process from ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition involves these steps:

1. Export the ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition configuration. For instructions, see ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition Help.

2. Install the Configuration Storage server component of ISA Server 2004 Enterprise Edition.

3. Install one array member (either on the Configuration Storage server or on a separate computer).

4. Import the configuration file that you exported in step 1 to the array you created in step 3.

5. Install ISA Server array members. The array must have only one member server when you import the configuration information.

Pasted from <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/isa/2004/isa2kexport.mspx>

Here's confirmation from Jim Harrison:

Yep:

1. export existing ISA policies

2. install EE over SE

3. import exported policies

Jim Harrison

Security Business Unit (ISA SE)

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

--Yogi Berra

ISA2004 SP1 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 on SBS2003

2005-02-28T23:24:00Z

ISA2004 SP1 as RTM'd and will be available to customers for download soon. Remember that you will need to configure your network manually as the networking wizards in SBS2003 RTM doesn't support ISA2004 on SBS. SBS will be supporting ISA2004 SP1 in our SP1 release.

One more blurp about ISA2004 SP1: VPN is now fully integrated with this version. Meaning ISA2004 on SBS will fully control RRAS settings. Any changes made through the RRAS snapin will be overwritten by ISA2004. Also dial-in only is not supported with ISA2004, which SBS is trying to fix right now. So wait for SBS2003 SP1.

Windows Server 2003 SP1 is in RC2 right now and some have installed it on their SBS machines. There are some issues in WS03 SP1 on SBS2003 RTM and those issues are addressed also in SBS2003 SP1. One issue that is common is that the Remote Access Wizard will fail after hanging for a long time.

CEICW chat

2004-10-25T20:59:00Z

Small Business Server 2003 Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard [October 26, 2004, 2:00-3:00 PM PDT]
Join Microsoft experts to discuss how the SBS 2003 Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard (CEICW) can help you configure your network.

Chat reminder: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/downloads/vcs/04_SBS2003_ECWiz_Oct14.ics

Chat room: http://communities2.microsoft.com/home/chatroom.aspx?siteid=34000015

Existing announcement: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/default.mspx

ISA2004 Standard Edition and SBS

2004-10-14T05:28:00Z

ISA2004 Standard Edition release sometime in May 2004 and so that naturally means there are some users that may want to try it on SBS2003. This article is for current SBS2003 premium users w/ ISA2000. The Configure Email and Internet Connection Wizard (CEICW) in SBS2003 configures ISA2000, but since ISA2004 is totally re-redesigned, CEICW doesn't configure ISA2004. That won't be a problem if you have ISA2000 already configured by CEICW to start with. So let me repeat that. Let CEICW configure ISA2000 for you before you upgrade to ISA2004.

The ISA2000 to ISA2004 upgrade is pretty seemless. All your packet filters will be migrated to access rules. All you web publishing rules will still be web publishing rules in ISA2004. Some more details on access rules:

In ISA2004, there are no more packet filters. Instead ISA2004 uses access rules to allow the necessary traffic through from the source network to the destination network for a certain group of people. For example: The packet filter created in ISA2000 for SMTP outbound from the SBS server allowed SBS to send SMTP traffic to mail servers on the internet for emailing. In ISA2004, that packet filter is now an access rule that looks like this: Allow SMTP (TCP 25) protocol from LocalHost (SBS server) to External (Internet) for All Users Anytime. The rules are easier to understand, but it may take some time to get use to if you are familiar with ISA2000.

The one thing about the ISA2000 to ISA2004 upgrade is that inbound packet filters are not converted to Server publishing rules. Instead ISA2004 converts these inbound packet filters to inbound access rules. So the packet filter to allow Remote Desktop traffic to the SBS server would look like this in ISA2004: Allow RDP (TCP 3389) protocol from External to LocalHost for All Users Anytime.

Another concept that is different on ISA2004 from ISA2000 is networks. ISA2000 would filter and protect the networks inside the Local Address Table (LAT), but in ISA2004 each network is separated and protected from each other. You'll have to setup access rules to communicate with another network. For example: In ISA2000 the SBS server (localhost) and the internal network was considered one network for the most part. Now in ISA2004 the localhost network is separate from the internal network. What does this mean? Out of the box (clean install of ISA2004) nothing will be able to communicated with the localhost network (ISA2000 to ISA2004 upgrades will put in necessary access rules to maintain you network functionality). You have to setup rules to allow that to happen. For internal clients to contact the SBS server you'll need the following access rule: Allow All protocols from internal network to localhost network for all users anytime. You can change the rule to allow the SBS server to contact client machines by changing the last access rule to: Allow All protocols from (internal network and localhost network) to (localhost network and internal network) for all users anytime.

Hope this helps you get started with ISA2004 on SBS.

Can't connect to Computer Desktop through RWW

2004-03-04T02:51:00Z

This article address the issue when you want to connect to a server or client machine through the RWW and you get a VBScript: Disconnect error telling you that you can't connect.

Verify that TCP 4125 isn't being used by another process:
From a command prompt type in "netstat -aon | find "4125"
Make sure that nothing is found. If something is found find that process
and see if you need it to be running on 4125.

This step will tell us if the end to end connection to port 4125 can be made from the client to the SBS server.
Go to http://isatools.org and download winsocktool.msi
Install it on the SBS server
Launch the winsocktool
Configure the tool for:
    Mode: Server
    Protocol: TCP
    Local address: 0.0.0.0
    Local port: 4125
Click Listen
On your external client open a command prompt
type telnet <external ip> 4125
Verify that the telnet session connected by typing some thing. You should
see it on the winsocktool console.

See KB article 828053 for connectivity issue when your client is behind an ISA firewall.