Back up your IIS Metabase.
To do this, follow these steps:
Start IIS Manager.
Right-click Default Web Site, point to All Tasks, and then click Save Configuration to a File.

Delete the virtual directories for Outlook Web Access.
To do this, right-click Exadmin in the left pane of IIS Manager, and then click Delete. Click Yes when you are prompted with the question of whether you want to delete this item.

Repeat this step for the following virtual directories:
Exchange
ExchWeb
Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync
OMA
Public
Quit IIS Manager.
Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then press ENTER.

Change to the following folder. In this example, Drive is the hard disk drive where Windows is installed:
Drive:inetpubadminscripts
Type adsutil, and then press ENTER.

Important By default, CScript is not the default scripting host for Windows Server 2003. To run the adsutil command, CScript must be configured as the default scripting host. To do this, click Yes if you are prompted to register CScript as you default host for VBscript, and then click OK.

Note: If you receive a list of adsutil command options, CScript is already configured as the default scripting host for VBscript.

Type adsutil delete ds2mb, and then press ENTER.

Note: To set the default scripting host to WScript, type WScript //H:WScript at the command prompt, press ENTER, and then click OK.

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
To restart the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
Right-click Microsoft Exchange System Attendant, and then click Restart.
When you are prompted to restart the dependant Exchange Server services, click Yes.

Note: When you restart the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service, the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is also restarted. In this scenario, your Exchange Server users lose connectivity to their Exchange Server mailboxes.

The virtual directories are re-created. To verify that the virtual directories are re-created, start IIS Manager, and then view the Default Web site folder.

Important If the virtual directories are not re-created after 15 minutes, restart the computer.
Reset the access permissions to Anonymous. To do this, follow these steps:
Start IIS Manager, right-click ExchWeb, click Properties, and then click the Directory Security tab.
Under Authentication and access control click Edit, and then verify that the Enable anonymous access check box is turned on.
Click to select the Integrated Windows authentication check box, click OK, and then click Apply.
If an Inheritance Overrides dialog box appears, click Select All, and then click OK.
Under Authentication and access control, click Edit, and then click to clear the Integrated Windows authentication check box.
Click OK two times, and then quit IIS Manager.

Use a Web browser to verify that you can connect to your Outlook Web Access server. If you are also running other mobility services, verify that you can connect to these services by using an appropriate client.

In order to make a USB device available to a Virtualbox guest, you need to have the device physically plugged into the VMhost, (the machine running Virtualbox Server) but it CANNOT BE MOUNTED. (I screamed that last part because it’s important.)
To do this, you’ll need to use the Windows diskpart command to disable automatic drive enumeration on a Windows server installation with the following commands:

diskpart
automount disable
automount scrub
exit

Now, reboot your VMHost, and Virtualbox will allow you to capture and use the USB device in the guest OS. And Robert remains your mother’s sister’s brother. ;)

For some reason, Microsoft’s default configuration for Exchange 2007 and 2010 exposes the internal server name in the mail headers, which causes most reverse-record-checking sites to bounce your email.

##EXCHANGE 2007##
To address this issue, you must remove the “NT AUTHORITYAnonymous Logon”? permissions from the send connector. Open the Exchange Management Shell, and do this:
>get-sendconnector (this will show the name of the send connector.)
SEND CONNECTOR NAME

>get-sendconnector <send CONNECTOR NAME>? | Remove-ADPermission -AccessRight ExtendedRight -ExtendedRights ms-Exch-Send-Headers-Routing? -user "NT AUTHORITYAnonymous Logon"

## EXCHANGE 2010##
1. Go to Exchange Management Console
2. Under Organization Configuration, select Hub Transport
3. Select Transport Rules, then “New Transport Rule”
Give the Rule a name, then set the following:

Conditions: Sent to Users Outside the organization
Remove Header: Received
Exceptions: None

1. Go to the Windows SBS Console, click on Network Tab, then click the Connectivity Tab
2. Click on the certificate icon, then click the “view certificate properties” in the right pane. In the “General” tab of the new window, it will show the dates that the self-signed certificate is valid for.
3. In the “Connectivity Tasks” area, click “Set up your Internet address”, go through the wizard to renew your self-signed SSL certificate.
4. When you now check the certificate properties, you will see that it is now valid for another two more years.

Fire up SQL management studio express, and run this query:

DECLARE
@DisplayName VARCHAR(256),
@Authentication VARCHAR(256),
@AuthenticatorTypeId INT,
@AuthenticatorInstanceId INT,
@ExternalAuthenticatorId VARCHAR(255),
@EncryptedPassword VARCHAR(256)

/************************************************************
Start of editing required section
*************************************************************/

SET @DisplayName = ‘System Administrator’ — Display name (Not always used)
SET @Authentication = ‘BAS’ — ‘BAS’ for BAS authentication
SET @EncryptedPassword = ‘7B7ECF0DAF70D040345D8DD92607E274969F4BA5DFDFAEAC5DE775E5340CDF605D5762EC5D326498ADBE72E7434897025A8702D0237046F554DBCA5769B90154:7637B189’ — Encrypted string of password ‘blackberry’

/************************************************************
End of editing required section
*************************************************************/

IF @Authentication LIKE ‘BAS’
BEGIN
SET @AuthenticatorTypeId = 0 — Set to 0 for BAS
SET @AuthenticatorInstanceId = 0 — Set to 0 for BAS
SET @ExternalAuthenticatorId = NULL

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM BASUsers WHERE LoginName = ‘admin’)
EXEC SetUpBASorADAuthentication @DisplayName, @AuthenticatorTypeId, @AuthenticatorInstanceId, @ExternalAuthenticatorId, @EncryptedPassword
ELSE
UPDATE BASUsers
SET LoginPassword = @EncryptedPassword
WHERE (LoginName = ‘admin’)

END
GO

Now, with a preview of the running VM!! ;)

net time /setsntp:"0.us.pool.ntp.org,1.us.pool.ntp.org,3.us.pool.ntp.org"
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync

Need to determine if you are using weak ciphers in IIS?
Try SSLDigger, it’s a free utility from Foundstone.

Also, if you’re running Windows Server 2008, and want to just disable all weak ciphers, you can use these registry merge files.
Just merge them with your registry, and reboot. Here they are.

I should point out that just randomly merging registry files you've found on the Internet is a lot like eating a sandwich that you've found on the sidewalk. If you don't understand what you are doing, you may want to do a little research first. I can't help you if you destroy your servers with these files. You've been warned.

Shamelessly ripped from Slipstick: (thanks, guys)

If your Outlook seems possessed and turns all of your meeting requests into recurring meetings, you have a Dell laptop with MediaDirect.

There is a bug in the add-in that reads Outlook meetings so Media Direct’s Instant Office can display then without fully booting into Windows. You’ll need to uninstall it, or disable the add-in called “Outlook Setup Addin (Cyberlink)” to put an end to the errant recurring meetings.

Original post here:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/recurringmeetings.htm

Recently, a client had issues with Office 2007 documents turning (supposedly) into .zip files.
Apparently, the .docx and .xlsx formats are actually compressed XML files, and when IIS doesn’t have a MIME type for them in the MIME map, it passes them through as .zip files. This is problematic, to say the least.
When this happens, you can run the following script against the web server, and add the necessary MIME types to the map.

The original article where the script was found is here.


' This script adds the necessary Office 2007 MIME types to an IIS 6 Server.
' To use this script, just double-click or execute it from a command line.
' Running this script multiple times results in multiple entries in the
' IIS MimeMap so you should not run it more than once.
' Modified from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752346.aspx

End Sub