If you’re having trouble accessing OWA after updating Exchange 2010 with any of the Rollup packages, try this: Uninstall the update package from the Programs and Features control panel Download the package file directly from Microsoft, don’t use Windows Update Open a command prompt or PowerShell prompt as Administrator Navigate to the location of the package (.msp) and run from the elevated command prompt. Apparently when Windows update installs the package it doesn’t run it with the elevated privileges to write to the folder in the Exchange program files – why, I have no idea!

On Monday I took the two Exchange 2010 exams, “70-662 TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring” and “70-663 PRO: Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010” and I am pleased to say that I passed both of them, scoring an 812 on the 70-662 and 960 on the 70-663. I am especially pleased with the score on the PRO exam! Overall, there’s quite a lot of overlap between the two exams, with the more heavily theory and design based PRO exam being a “high-level” of the more hands-on management and cmdlet based TS exam.

Up until now, I’ve been using BlogEngine.Net as my blogging platform, and up until now I’ve been relatively happy with using it. One of the major drivers for me as a “Microsoft” person was to use something that is based on Microsoft technology – BlogEngine.Net is based (as the name suggests) on the .Net framework. I’m much happier these days writing limited amounts of C#.Net than I am with PHP.

The Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer is perhaps the best tool I’ve used in a long time for troubleshooting Exchange external access – it just works! On the forums and websites I read, it doesn’t seem to get the coverage that I’d expect, so I thought I’d give it a mention.

I’ve just fixed an issue with Routing for my mixed Exchange 2003/2007/2010 environment. The environment is a single AD domain with 4 sites, Site1, Site2, Site3 and Site4. In Site1, Site2 and Site3 there are 3 Exchange 2003 servers, one per site. In Site4 there is an Exchange 2007 SP2 server (CAS, Mailbox, HT). All the connectors required worked as expected, and inter-site routing works as expected. I introduced into the mix a 2010 Enterprise server (CAS, Mailbox, HT) to Site1 as a prelude to a full upgrade of the site to Exchange 2010.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time today trying to sort out my iPhone sync to my Exchange Server, failing miserably. It used to work, pre-upgrade to iOS4, but for some reason fails to sync. Symptoms were: iPhone fails to sync, generic timeout error (or is very slow) https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ successfully tests the mailbox access The server was configured as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817379/en-us to allow OWA/ActiveSync with SSL on OWA. The iPhone was configured to accept the SSL certificate on the Exchange Server.

This is a pretty specific set of instructions for a specific environment: If you are using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 and you have a Microsoft Certificate Services 2003 Certificate Authority on your domain and you have non-domain Windows Server 2008 servers you wish to monitor or set up as a gateway server. Getting a certificate for either a Gateway Server or remotely monitored Server can be a touch vexing.

I’m currently testing an Exchange 2010 server for the organisation prior to a migration project, specifically testing moving mailboxes backwards and forwards. Something that confused me slightly for a few minutes was this: if there is an existing Move Request (pending, in progress, failed or completed) you will not see the “New Local Move Request” or “New Remote Move Request” - Fortunately this is very simple to counter – simply clear the old “Move Request” and the options will be back in the Mailbox options:

Shhhh, don’t tell the spam-bots, but after a blissful month of having broken the comments system and not having enough time to fix it, I’ve finally got round to doing it! Comments will now work without errors - and the spam-bots should have a hard time getting past reCaptcha too! At some point I’ll update to 1.6.1, but for now, I’m glad it’s working again!

If you have a Windows Server 2008 box in a workgroup that you require access to one of the admin shares, it can be a little more complicated than with Server 2003. In my case, we had a SQL server on the back end which was trying to access the web server in the DMZ using PSExec.exe to remotely run a process. Executing PSExec and passing the correct credentials failed with “Access is Denied”.