Mitch's Blog

Well I have it working finally. Microsoft had a great article on removing and reinstalling IIS which worked great except for one small caveat The arrticle is Q320202 but the caveat is that when it talks about uninstalling the Client access Roles and says you can do it from the Add and Remove programs Well it does not seem to remove everything. I did this twice and had the same problem Since I knew my problem was because of Webconfig files being empty. I would check them and they still were empty.

So how did I fix it. I used the Command line listed under step 3 plus since I was having a problem with UM installing (the service would not start) I inluded it in the uninstall Even though add and remove programs/change exchange still showed it as being uninstalled. When I ran the command below it found the UM role and uninstalled it plus all files and the services.

exsetup.exe /mode:uninstall /roles:CA, UM

This even stated it was removing files and appears to have done so because all the actual files were removed that were related to UM. I Then Rebooted the system and reinstalled both roles through cmd line. it works great now.

Hope this helps someone out.

I have had a zune for a while and always had a pain syncing the Podcasts Microsoft put out. But the new version works Awesome. I am working on my exchange server rebuilding IIS right now and hoping it will work better. But while I am doing it I am syncing my zune with all the good pod casts.

Trying to get exchange 2007 UM installed in a lab environment. Have been for 5 months. I have done it on production systems 3-4 times with no problem. However I am the type that when I run into trouble in my lab I want to fix it not just blow it away and start over. I want to know why it broke. So  Away I go working on this.

I had had previous problems when I had loaded vmware on the server so I could run exchange and UM in  a separate vm. I failed to realize that vmware kicks IIS into 32 bit mode and installs what appears to be .net 1.1. this totally broke OWA. Which I was finally able to fix after multiple rebuilds of IIS. I did not realize that the UM directory was also affected by this. Since I thought I had not tried to install um when this happened (should take better notes next time I probably tried to install it but can’t remember).

So after looking for 2 days I realize that the webconfig file in the UM IIS directory is empty. It says it is 50KB but there is nothing there. So now  I am working on how to recover that. Have a long way to go but will let you know when it is up.

OK I have seen it all now http://www.news.com/Microsoft-exec-calls-XP-hack-frightening/2100-7349_3-6218238.html?tag=nefd.top I wonder who the security researcher is that came across this and feels like they can take the world down. users and hackers have been doing that since windows xp sp1 came out.

Any one in their right mind would not put an unsecured computer on an unsecured wireless network with no anti-virus, firewall or anti-spyware. This is just nuts and asking for trouble. However I understand that they are trying to raise awareness in the computing world because there are so many companies and individual users that have things configured this way. Ran on a group that had open wireless and were still on SP1 just a couple of weeks ago. To me open wireless means physical access to your network. And once you have physical access the whole ball game changes. Open wireless is bad just by itself.

What is interesting is that someone will invariably use this to point the finger at Microsoft being weak and unsecured.  As usual my biggest complaint is that most implementations are what causes your security problem. if I implement Windows XP with out the latest services packs, and then do not put on any firewall or anti-virus then i really should expect to have a BIG HOLE in my network. That is NOT Microsoft’s Fault.

"90% of your problems are planned into your solutions"

this is not my quote and i do not want credit for it but do not know the author.

When I first started dealing with UC I wanted to figure out what that really meant. Just about every company (vendor) now has some sort of UC plan or product. So what does it really mean. All of them talk about the ability to communicate some refer to IM, Some think about UC as being Unified messaging. Some may even refer to presence as UC. So what should UC be?

In my opinion I believe that UC should be a tool that helps unify all of your communications methods. From Microsoft Word to you cell phone. There is no possible way for this to be one product for most companies however with the right products it is possible.

So what do we look for in UC? A product that integrates well with all of you communications methods. i.e. Fax, Cell, IM, Presence, Conference calling, Word documents, PowerPoint documents. if the product can integrate all of the above and many more then you are looking at true unified communications.

This Blog will be one of many that will begin to look at Unified communications and Microsoft’s Office Communications Server. Along with some occasional rants about training engineers and more.