Windows Server Archives - Page 6 of 6

13/03/2013

MSSQL Install – “Reporting Services Catalog Database File Existence” failed

This happened to me because I installed MMSQL Server and then I had to uninstall it and re-install because I had the collation wrong. But during one of the pre-installation checks that SQL Server runs it come up with:

“Reporting Services Catalog Database File Existence” failed
“Reporting Services Catalog Temporary Database File Existence” failed.

To fix this problem we need to delete some files that the SQL Server uninstaller must miss for some reason.

Navigate to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA” then delete the following files:

ReportServer.mdf
ReportServer_log.LDF
ReportServerTempDB.mdf
ReportServerTempDB_log.LDF

Once you have deleted the files hit the re-run button on the pre-installation check and it will pass.

Now your problem should be resolved just continue on with your install.

Windows Server

08/03/2013

Restoring a backup from Microsoft Server 2003 to Server 2008 and above

So you want to restore a backup on a new Windows Server from and older version of Windows Server. Well on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 the built in backup program was called ntbackup. In Server 2008 they come up with a new backup program call Windows Server Backup.
Windows Server Backup will not restore backups from the old ntbackup program, which makes it a little bit difficult when you want to upgrade your server because you don’t have the tool built straight into the OS to restore the old backup. Luckily the “lovely” people at Microsoft made a program very small program to restore ntbackup backups to your server. There is a different program for Server 2008 then Server 2008 R2.

For Windows Server 2008:

Download this.
You will need to install Removable Storage Management on Windows Server 2008
Open Server Manager, navigate to the Features Summary section, and click Add features.
Select the check box next to Removable Storage Manager, click Next, and then click Install.
Then just install it and run from start menu

For Windows Server 2008 R2:

In Server 2008 R2 they have removed the “Removable storage management” feature so the old utility doesn’t work for restoring the ntbackup file(which is .bkf if your wondering…) but Microsoft did release a hot-fix, and this just works you can download it from here you just need to put your details in and they email you an update file and then you apply and ntbackuprestore appears in your start menu. Just run it and restore.

Hope this helps you all 🙂

Windows

22/02/2013

Keyboard Shortcuts for Hyper-V

Standard Windows Key combination does not work in the Hyper-V virtual machine, it will just send it to the physical host. So they have changed the keyboard shortcuts to work in Hyper-V. I think they should put a button on there that you can click to send all keyboard shortcuts to the virtual machine but as yet they haven’t. So here are the ones that microsoft in all thier wisdom have decided that we need inside of a Hyper-V:
CTRL + ALT + DEL = CTRL + ALT + END

which displays the Task Manager or Windows Security dialog box on Windows (or logs in).
ALT + TAB = ALT + PAGE UP

which Switches between programs from left to right.
ALT + SHIFT + TAB = ALT + PAGE DOWN

which Switches between programs from right to left.
ALT + ESC = ALT + INSERT

which Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.
CTRL + ESC = ALT + HOME,

which Displays the Windows Start menu.

Some extra ones just for inside Hyper-V:
CTRL + ALT + PAUSE Changes the Virtual Machine Connection window to / from full screen mode.
CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW Releases mouse and keyboard focus from the Virtual Machine Connection window.

Some extra things to know about Virtual Machine Connection key combinations:

The default standard Windows key combinations do not get sent to the Hyper-V virtual machine, unless you are in full screen mode. If you can change this so that they are always sent to the virtual machine (if the Virtual Machine Connection has focus) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings… and then Keyboard and selecting the Use on the virtual machine option. I always enable this setting.
But CTRL + ALT + DEL will always go to the physical computer – so you need to use CTRL + ALT + END no matter what you select for a setting here.

How to Install Windows Server 2012

Active Directory Tutorials

Windows Server

28/12/2012

SharePoint cannot connect to configuration database error after installing KB2687442 update on SBS Server 2008

So I have been trying to fix a problem with SharePoint on a clients server running small business server 2008. When I got to it I browsed to http://companyweb/ and it would say “cannot connect to configuration database” so I started off by trying to connect through https://companyweb/ that didn’t work so I
Tested user permissions for IIS
Checked IIS Configuration
Checked MSSQL Services
Checked MSSQL manager for permission errors
Get into sharepoint consol
Check sharepoint user permissions
So now I think the answer must be out there somewhere so I start searching
the problem and errors in the event viewer. I had found some errors in the application log they were:
and found some articles on Microsoft knowledge base on how to fix the problem.

The errors were:

Event 5586 , Windows SharePoint Services 3

Unknown SQL Exception 33002 occured. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.
Access to module dbo.proc_GetRunnableWorkItems is blocked because the signature is not valid.

Event 6800, Windows Sharepoint Services 3

The database ShareWebDb on SERVER\Microsoft##SSEE is not accessible to missing Windows Internal Database signatures

33002 MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE

The description for Event ID 33002 from source MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
module
dbo.proc_GetRunnableWorkItems
The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file

5586 Windows SharePoint Services 3

Unknown SQL Exception 33002 occured. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.
Access to module dbo.proc_GetRunnableWorkItems is blocked because the signature is not valid.
Event 12022, WSUS
The Client Web Service is not working
These errors have been caused in my case by an update from microsoft called “Security Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 (KB2687442)”.

How to fix Sharepoint problem

You will need to open to MSSQL Server 2005 Management Studio that is on your SBS Server(Make sure you open this as administrator by right clicking on the shortcut and selecting run as adminstrator or it will not work). Then connect to \\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query

Now you are connected to the database expand the databases folder and right click on ShareWebDB then choose properties.
Once in the properties of ShareWebDB then you need to select “files” in the left hand pane of the windows and then in the “ShareWebDB_log” click the 3 dots() button for autogrowth option. This will now bring up a menu and you need to make sure that unrestriced file growth is enabled.

Now you can exit the SQL Server Management Studio.
Now you need to open an elevated command prompt(To do this right click on commad prompt and select run as administrator) and run the following commands

cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

stsadm -o provisionservice -action stop -servicetype spwebservice -servicename “”

stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype spwebservice -servicename “”

psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

If any of these commands fail then restart the SQL Service and also make sure the website is started in IIS.

Psconfig will take a while to run I’d give it at least an hour.
Once all of those have finished restart the server. Now open http://companyweb/ in a browser. Hopefully that works. If you get the IIS default start page then you need to check the bindings for the site in IIS if not then start the IIS service in the services console. To check the sites bindings open up IIS manager and lnavigate tthrough sites and to SharePoint. See what the bindings say. There you will need to add a binding for http by clicking bindings on the right hand side and selecting add. Add a binding for companyweb on port 80. Now exit IIS and restart the server.
Open http://companyweb/ in your browser. The “cannot connect to configuration database” message is gone and sharepoint is working as normal agin.
Now SharePoint is working again.

Note

Remember to select run as administrator or these instructions will not work.

Windows Server

19/12/2012

What is Active Directory

Active Directory or AD is a role that you can install on windows server to promote it to a domain controller and manage your domain.

AD has been designed by Microsoft to manage your domain. AD stores user, network and domain information in a single jet database and can manage the security surrounding all that information. Active directory is used by system administrators to control access to domain systems and also information and the way users interact with the system. Active directory was introduced in the 90’s by Microsoft to improve the windows NT flat domain model that was not scalable enough for larger domains. They based Active Directory on LDAP(lightweight directory access protocol), which is a protocol developed by the university of Michigan.
AD stores information on users such as first name, last name, address, phone numbers etc. for use by other applications and services like Microsoft Exchange(emails) and uniflow(canon print management system). Active Directory also stores information about computers, printers, services security permissions, domains, people and more. All of this information is then integrated to be used in the active directory environment.
With Active Directory you can group your computers and your users int o different groups to give them different security levels and system options like you may want only people in the finance department to be able to view the finance shared folder so you would add all of your finance department employees to a group and give that group permission to view the finance share.
Active Directory users are controlled by something called group policy. Group policy is a set of rules that the user must abide by eg. Password complexity, blocking task manager or using a certain printer. Group policy can contain multiple rule sets called Group Policy Objects or GPO’s and they can be mapped to correspond with different groups, you may have multiple GPO’s applying to one group and multiple groups using the same GPO’s.

To see more about Active Directory watch this playlist on Windows Server 2012.