Category: Microsoft

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Deploy Office 2019 via GPO

With the advent of Office 2019, Microsoft has moved away from GPO deployment via MSI. There is no MSI of Office, Visio, Project, etc available to download anymore. Microsoft is moving toward using SCCM or the Office Deployment tool. I was tasked with coming up with a method for deploying Office via GPO in a fully automated manner.

There may be more than one way to accomplish GPO deployment of Office, and I do not claim to have the best method. It took me quite a bit of research and troubleshooting to get this method to work. I hope it helps someone looking to accomplish the same thing I was. Read More

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Skype for Business 2015 – Mobility clients not able to find contacts

I was recently asked to look in to a Skype for Business 2015 infrastructure due to reported 2013 mobility client issues.  The infrastructure consisted of a standard edition front end, edge server and KEMP load master reverse proxy.  The issue was that mobility clients could not search for contacts and could not see certain status messages.  All other features were working and users could chat/make calls.

Testing with https://www.testconnectivity.microsoft.com/ shows green across the board.  If you are dealing with this issue, start with this tool and run the following tests:

  • Skype for Business remote connectivity test
  • Skype for Business autodiscover test
  • Exchange server ActiveSync autodiscover test

Testing with Microsoft Lync Connectivity Analyzer showed ready for 2013 mobility client.

After examining the Lync Front End server event log, I found event 32054, LS Storage service:

Storage Service had an EWS Autodiscovery Failure.  The underlying connection was closed.  Could not establish a trust relationship SSL/TLS.

The issue would seem to be the published autodiscover Uri for Exchange not matching the installed certificate on the Exchange 2016 DAG members.  The Uri in the event log was reporting autodiscover.domain.local.  The certificates and all other services in the infrastructure were pointing to autodiscover.domain.org.  On the Exchange server, running powershell Get-ClientAccessService | fl AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri will display the currently assigned URLs.

Issuing a Set-CsClientAccessService -Identity exchange.domain.local -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri https://autodiscover.domain.org/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml for both servers in the Exchange DAG solved the mobility client address book issue.

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Back from the Dead – Virtualizing DOA Laptops

Simple post on restoring dead laptops using virtualization.  Some people ask me: “Is there any way to bring a laptop back from the dead?” or “I dropped my laptop in the toilet and now it wont start! How do I get to my important stuff?”.   The answer is not exactly simple, but it is effective in most cases.  If you need access to the OS for some reason prior to restoring data on a new system, it may be possible to restore the laptop and boot it as a VM.

First off, you need to remove the physical hard drive from the device.  You will want the primary (boot) disk.  You may also need the secondary hard drives if you installed critical apps in non-standard locations.

Second, you need a hard-drive caddy of some sort. Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817270043 would work just fine.  Any enclosure will due.

Third, you need a working computer to plug the enclosure in to.  This will mount the OS drive as an external drive on the chosen machine.  We need to convert this drive to a format virtualization programs will understand.  The most common of which is Virtual Hard Disk (VHD/VHDX) format.  To do this, we need a program like Disk2vhd http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Run Disk2vhd, check the appropriate partitions from the connected external drive.  Choose a location with enough space and name your VHD.  Un-check VHDX if you intend to use VirtualBox as the VM player.

Once the VHD is created, install a VM player.  I will be using VirtualBox in this example.

Run VirtualBox and create new VM.  Choose the OS settings from the drop downs.  This must match the version of the OS that was running on the old machine.  If you don’t know the exact version, one way to check is to inspect the ntoskrnl file under /Windows/System32/, look at details and find the product version number.  Reference the version number here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724832%28v=vs.85%29.aspx and here: http://www.gaijin.at/en/lstwinver.php

Select your memory amount and boot the VM.  The old OS should boot fine and install all new drivers needed.  You may need to perform some system repair, or OS repair due to driver conflicts but most of the time the boot is clean.

 

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Exchange 2013 ECP – :-( Something Went Wrong

Fresh deployment of Exchange 2013.  As you try to connect to the management console https://localhost/ecp/ with a valid administrator account, it redirects to OWA and responds with “:-( Something Went Wrong, A problem occurred when trying to use your mailbox.”

This seems to be related to left over Exchange attributes in Active Directory.  I tried everything from a multitude of TechNet articles including the following:

  1. Rebuilding the ECP front end and back end (Reference)
  2. Adding appropriate permissions to the administrator account
  3. Connecting directly to the back end by using port 444
  4. Messing with certificates (Reference)
  5. Many articles mentioned having CAS and MBX roles installed, but these were installed on the same machine at the same time
  6. Manually creating the administrator mailbox using the exchange shell

Finally I tried just creating another user account in AD and gave it permissions to manage Exchange by adding it to the group ADUC–>Domain.local–>Microsoft Exchange Security Groups–>Organization Management.

That allowed access to the ECP and after some more digging in ADSIedit, I can see old exchange attributes attached to the enterprise Administrator account.  I believe this is the problem as the management console lists Administrator as already having a “legacy” mailbox.  The attributes are referencing exchange servers that no longer exist in the environment.

I plan to start ripping out old exchange attributes to test this theory.

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Exchange 2013 Schema Prep – ADC Found

Installing a new Exchange 2013 deployment on an existing domain with questionable history.  The existing domain had untold number of previous Exchange deployments with remnants scattered throughout Active Directory.  After using ADSI edit to manually remove all instances of the old Exchange servers, running a schema prep runs in to an error about an existing Active Directory Connector.  Microsoft suggests (TechNet) disabling the ADC service on the running computer, then uninstalling the service using the exchange server installation CD.  In this situation of course the detected ADC was probably on a computer that was long ago trashed or removed.

Lots of websites describe the method for removing ADCs from AD using ADSIedit.

(Reference)

(Reference)

Open ADSIedit
Expand Configuration –> Services –> Microsoft Exchange –> Active Directory Connections
Delete ADC under Active Directory Connections
Replicate changes to all Domain Controllers

Running the Schema prep another time results in the same error:

After some digging we found the rogue connector buried in Active Directory Sites and Services.

Open the sites and services mmc and look for any machines that aren’t active servers.  Delete anything that doesn’t belong and run the tool again.  It should finish successfully.