17/06/2009 by Paul.

One of the most frustrating issues to resolve can be a logon that takes minutes to complete.

The following article helps you to understand what is happening and how to monitor the difference processes at work.

There are no magic solutions - just some great pointers for where to start your detective work.

Troubleshooting Poor Windows Logon Performance

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19/04/2009 by Paul.

The following KB covers how to use Telnet to communicate directly with SMTP servers.

How To Test SMTP Services Manually in Windows Server 2003

These steps are excellent to help understand issues with mail flow.

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26/03/2009 by Paul.

During some troubleshooting we noticed a process called JQS.exe which had read a huge 5gb of data since our server booted a only 5 hours ago.

Looking into this the service is called Java Quick Start and is to help speed up the starting of Java applications. For our servers this is not required and we wanted to disable this.

I found a guide on a site called - GHacks
For reference I have copied the steps incase the source blog isn’t available when I need them

if you want to disable the Java Quick Starter process you can do that in the Windows Control Panel. You find a Java entry there which will open the Java Control Panel.

A click on Advanced and the selection of Miscellaneous will display the activated Java Qucik Starter entry. Uncheck the box to disable the process. This will be visible in the Windows Task Manager immediately.

You can enable the process again in case you would like to use it at a later time.

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25/02/2009 by Paul.

First the Adminpak for Windows Server must be installed - the latest can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e487f885-f0c7-436a-a392-25793a25bad7&displaylang=en

Now check for computer that haven’t logged in in a period of time - the example below uses 8 weeks - from the command line enter:
dsquery computer -inactive 8 -limit 0

After reviewing this list to make sure these computers no longer exist on your network you can use the following command to find and delete them:
dsquery computer -inactive 8 -limit 0 | dsrm -noprompt

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23/02/2009 by Paul.

If you are suffering from delayed messages or you need to better understand the message path for inbound mails the place to look is the SMTP message header.

In outlook you can get this by right clicking on the message and choosing properties. In the window displayed the header information is in a box towards the bottom.

The text in here can be very difficult to follow - especialyl if it passes through several time zones.

The following website allows you to paste the header data directly in and then it will show you each server that touched the message and the time between each stage.

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

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12/09/2008 by Paul.

If your SBS2003 server looses network connectivity after a reboot and you spot an event in your system event log such as …

The IPSec driver has entered Block mode. IPSec will discard all incoming and outgoing TCP/IP network traffic that is not permitted by boot-time IPSec Policy exemptions. User Action: To restore full unsecured TCP/IP connectivity, disable the IPSec services, and then restart the computer. For detailed troubleshooting information, review the events in the Security event log.

… then you should read the following guides which will help to prevent this from happening again.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956189

Technet - SBS Blog

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24/01/2007 by Paul.

Dave Overton has some links on his blog on how to get a WSSv3 site up and running on the SBS box without it breaking companyweb.

http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2007/01/12/using-companyweb-with-wss-v3-on-a-sbs-box-and-more-information-on-not-shooting-yourself.aspx

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24/01/2007 by Paul.

This could be well worth some time spent to assist with deploying windows Vista machines in a business enviroment.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/bdd/2007/default.mspx

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17/01/2007 by Paul.

The official SBS Blog lists this potential issue for receiving faxes to a mail recipient.

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2007/01/15/fax-fails-because-of-orbs.aspx

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16/01/2007 by Paul.

This shows how you can ease client’s home connection experience by some cleaver DNS settings.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/javier/archive/2005/06/03/50410.aspx

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