Test Layout

I recently downloaded a new version of Adobe Flash Player or possibly Adobe Reader. Imagine my surprise when the Adobe Download Manager reports that in addition to installing Flash, it also installed McAfee Security Scan Plus. At the time I assumed that perhaps this was done only to secure the download process and didn't think much of it. At the time I did not see an option to not select this software, but it may have been there. It turns out that this is security scanning software from McAfee. And while it is legitimate software, it only scans for threats and does not prevent or remove them. On their web page it is promoted as a "Free Download" and it "Actively checks your computer for anti-virus software, firewall protection, and web security, and threats in your open applications." On the same page is a large link for "McAfee Virus Removal Services". Described as " McAfee Virus Removal Service detects and eliminates viruses, Trojans, spyware ...

We recently took over support for an SBS 2011 server that is having issues (to put it politely). Our first indication that we have a problem was the Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell not running properly. When EMC or EMS started, we'd get the following error. Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message: The WinRM client cannot process the request. It cannot determine the content type of the HTTP response from the destination computer. The content type is absent or invalid. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic. The exchange online help indicated that this can be cause by a user not having remote powershell permissions. The EMC and EMS in Exchange 2010 use remote powershell which requires WinRM to be properly functional. The exchange help suggests running set-user userid -PowerShellEnabled $true . However, you can't without the EMS properly loaded. Following several documents, I attempted to verify t...

I've run into a lot of confusion lately about when you need to Enterprise versions of Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2010. It's actually very straightforward to decide. You need to ask two questions: Will there be more than 5 databases on a Mailbox server? If yes, you need Exchange 2010 Enterprise edition. Will you have a database availability group (DAG)? If yes, then you need Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition for each Mailbox server in the DAG. That's it! The only difference between Exchange 2010 Standard edition and Exchange 2010 Enterprise edition is the number of databases supported on each Mailbox server. There are no other differences. Database physical size is unlimited for both versions. DAGs are also supported on both versions. A DAG requires the failover clustering feature that is only available in the Enterprise edition of Windows Server 2008. Failover clustering is configured and managed by the Exchange management tools, but it needs to be there. It...

During the installation of Exchange 2010, the computer account for the Exchange Server is added to the Exchange Server security group. This ensures that Exchange 2010 on that server has access to any necessary information in Active Directory. In most cases, computer names are unique between domains. However, if the computer that Exchange 2010 is being installed onto has the same computer name as a computer in another domain in the forest, the process of adding the new Exchange 2010 server to the Exchange Servers security group fails and the installation of Exchange 2010 fails. This error occurs based on an Active Directory search for the computer name. So, the computer account with the conflicting name may be left over from a long time ago. Easy solution, if the conflicting computer account is no longer required, then remove it. If the conflicting computer account is required, then rename your server before installing Exchange Server 2010.

Several times during Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 migrations, we've run into an issue where we are unable to delete the last mailbox store before uninstalling Exchange 2003. We receive a message like: One or more users currently use this mailbox store. These users must be moved to a different mailbox store or be mail disabled before deleting this store. ID no: c1034a7f Exchange System Manager However, when we use System Manager to view the list of mailboxes, only system mailboxes are displayed. The system mailboxes do not need to be deleted before the mailbox store can be removed. There are references to the mailbox database in Active Directory that may or may not be valid. The easiest way to identify the user accounts with references to this database is by using a query in Active Directory Users and Computers. Create a custom query and enter in the following LDAP syntax: (&(mailnickname=*)(msExchHomeServerName=* OldServerName *)) This query search identifies mai...