Exchange Week lost count

Server hardware has been here for about a week now, i have already setit up as a domain controller with exchange installed on it with no problems.

After a little discusion with my assistant have decided it would be a good idea to take this opertunaty to rebuild the entire network again, so have set the new server up as the PDC with the same name as the exsisting PDC.

Exchange week 5.2

He Shoots He Scores

Meeting was a success everyone gave me the go ahead to order hardware and get the proccess started. Looking at quotes now for hardware, Server + Switch + UPS + Backup.

For backup i have decieded to look at network storage sata hdds, they look pretty good.

Exchange Week 5.1

Time has come. 1 hour left before i have to go and sell the product to the leadership team. If all goes well we should get the go ahead and the money to order our new server plus some extra backup devices.

Exchange 4.1

The time has been set, Tuesday 6th June at 3:30, need to sell exchange to the entire leadership team.

Great will need to iron my shirt for a change, and possibly put a tie on instead of leaving it on my desk every day.

Have decieded to cut down on the need of an extra workstation by installing a virtual workstation onto the server, encouted errors due to no network connection but a quick google search on the images told me how to create a loop back cable.

Setup four users using "random" names: Bart, Lisa, Homer, and Marge each with there own mail box.

Ran a test sending tasks to different users: successful

Looking at ways of sharing a calandar. seems to be two different ways either share a calander of a user, so for a whole school calandar create a user called whole school calandar. This would mean that someone would have to keep checking a different mail box.
The other way is to create a public folder and create a calandar in there. this seems to be the best way, will look into this more.

Exchange 3.3

The Verdict

Mandatory profiles do not work with Outlook.
Looking at the facts moving the application data to the home dir speeds up the logon procces a bit but not needing to be copied to the local drive at logon, so possibly if i switch everybody back to roaming profiles it would work, but printers will become an issue again.

So....
attempt to rewrite my printer program to remove network printers at start up then install chosen printers.

Exchange 3.1

Had anouther look at the profile problem this morning.

Started by removing everything to do with profiles so far.
Redirected the application data folder to the home directory, now this sounds simple but just try it. To start with enter the gpo then goto User Config - Windows Settings - Application Data and bring up the properties, and change the first setting to 'Basic' then in the target folder location you have to use 'Create a folder for each user under the root path' if you do not it just changes back after you click 'OK', in the root path enter the unc path.

Exchange Week 3

Not a lot done on exchange over the last few days, still having problems using mandatory profiles, but simply alowing admin users to use it in outlook and students to use it in explorer may bypass this problem.

Exchange week 2.2

Converted my users to mandatory profiles today to discover that this just screws everything up.

Have looked at a couple of web sites that claim to have this working but it is still causeing me problems. i will let you know when i have an answer.

Teaching myself outlook: It all looks very basic, there are a few sections that just seem to be pointless and some that look very complicated, i can see that restricting students may be a problem.

Exchange week 2.1

Outlk11.adm
installed with the microsoft office resource kit
used by adding template to group policy object editor
Very help full for customizeing security in outlook.

Exchange week 2

Didn't manage to get an update to this blogg done on friday so thought i would do it now.

Exchange server fully up and running, workstation built and tested.
Had an issue when starting outlook on the workstation for the first time on any profile where the user would have to set up exchange manualy on every workstation he/she wnated to use it on, but after a bit of a play with the office custom insterlation wizard i managed to get this fixed.

Now just to teach myself some of the features of outlook/exchange.

Exchange Day 2

Managed to getserver 2003 + exchange installed onto my laptop with no problems.
Have created a single user with a mail box.
Now trying to use our crappy test station to install windows xp with out any luck so far.

Exchange Day 1

End of day one and test machine has fell over twice, so have given up on it (bloody blue screens).

Decieded to use my laptop instead, specs as follows

40 gig HDD
756 Ram
DVD Rom
1.4 pentium M cpu

I think it should be able to handle it and it means i should be able to work on it from home as well.

Exchange Day 1

After a very small amount of thought decided it would proberbly be better to keep the test eviroment completly seperate from our domain. This means that our crappy test machine needs to also handle active directory as well as exchange, cant wait to see it struggle.

Installing server 2003 with Active dir, and IIs, and NNPT + SMPT.

Exchange Day 1

Have arranged to give leadership team a demonstration in 3 weeks, should really get this up and running quickly then.

We have downloaded the 120 day trial of exchange 2003, and have found some hardware to test it on.

specs of test server:
AMD 2000+ XP CPU
40 gig HDD standard IDE
256 Ram (dont think this will be enouth)
SIS chipset all in one cheap and nasty motherboard
52 X CDrom
3.5 inch fdd
crappy 15 inch monitor
old ball mouse
nackered keyboard.

New Term New Task

New term has started, new task started, its good to be back.

Exchange Server
AIM
The aim is simple setup an exchange server to be in full use from september 06.

Methord
Any way that gets the job done, with me doing as little work as possible.

Week update

Haven't managed to log anything this week and thought i better just drop an update just for the sake of it.

Tuesday morning was involved in an road traffic accadent, wrote my car off and took the day of work.
Wednesday sun was shinning no one wanted to use a computer let alone log any faults. Went home early and moved a couple of tons of granite to get ready for the new building project.
Thursdays could barely move my arms all day, had dentist in am so could hardly speak all day.

Last day of term today so not much should happen, school closes at 1, then off to find the sun in spain.

Monday

Monday has come again.
Sun is shining, birds are singing.
Assistant has been given the day of by the powers from above.
Wich means i have been out of the office all day doing small jobs that are not even worth thinking about.

Ran the sims + FMS updates on friday last thing, so as per usaual sims and fms were not working this morning, wich in turns warents 30 odd phone calls to tell me so.

Friday

End of the week has arrived again, no major problems today, just a few arguments with one teacher.

After telling her off for failing to return 2 laptops at the end of here lesson yesterday, she decieds an hour later would be a good time to ring me and request help plugging video/audio cables in so she can play a sound through her computer, now come on three phone cables colour coded red white and yellow, three sockets coloured red white and yellow, has it become so easy to become a teacher now that they do not need to know basic colour cordination. Left her waiting for ten mins then whent down myself to plug them in. Didn't bother testing just left without saying a word, havent heard anything else from her today.

new registry setting found today

Thursday has come and past again, anouther non day as far as i'm concerned.

Did find a nice setting for the network to remove most error messages the students see, such as access denied messages.
The registry setting is as follows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Controlcreate key: error message instrument
create dword: EnableDefaultReply
give it a value of 00000001
reset machine.

This is simple and effective, and should save me a lot of hassel.

Also managed to sort out what was preventing the teachers and admin staff from burning CDs, as it turned out it was simply the denied access to the c: that was causing the problem.

Why is it you only lurn something help full at the end of the day?

After a rather dull and pointless day i found something that is going to make life a hell of a lot easyer, I hope.

Casualy browsing through regedit i noticed an option called 'load hive' not not knowing what the hell a hive is (in regedit) thought i would investergate further, after a very short period of time noticed that i could open NTUser.dat from any profile that was not being used.

This may sound pointless but combined with mandatory profiles it means i can achive just about anything.

putting it to the test now, i will keep this blog up todate with the results.