Creating a Recurring Email in Windows Server 2008 Using Exchange 2010

On occasion, an organization may have a need to send a recurring email. In the case of one of our customers, there was a need to send a weekly notice to users that patches would be applied to the terminal servers overnight with a friendly reminder to save any work. To set this up is really quite simple. Here is how:

First, open the Task Schedule and choose Create Task. This will open the Task Properties window.

On the General tab of the Task Properties window, fill in a Description. Choose the user account from which you would like to send the email. Finally, choose “Run whether user is logged on or not” and “Run with highest privileges.

On the Triggers tab, click New. Make selections as appropriate for the frequency and be sure to check Enabled.

On the Actions tab, choose “Send an e-mail” from the Action drop-down menu. Fill out the From, Subject, and Text of the message. Add any appropriate attachment and fill in the SMTP server address. If the Scheduled Task is being configured on your Exchange server, you can simply enter 127.0.0.1 for the SMTP server. Click OK to return to the Task Properties window.

On the Conditions tab, specify the conditions under which the task should run.

On the Settings tab, you should choose  “Allow task to be run on demand”.

After clicking OK to close all the Windows, right-click the task, and click Run to test. Ensure that the test email is received by the intended recipient(s).

In some instances, you may need to configure a Receive Connector on your Exchange server which allows anonymous relay. You can find a instructions for doing that on Microsoft’s website here.

Running a Root Shell in Ubuntu 13.04

A little over a year and a half ago, a fellow engineer wrote an article for Enabling the Root Password in Ubuntu 11.10 (instead of using sudo). The article was geared towards providing a convenient way to run root commands in a shell without the need to constantly type “sudo” at the beginning of every command.

Example:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove

Today, I would like to present an alternate method of accomplishing the same task.

At the command prompt type

sudo su

You will be prompted for your sudo password. After entering your sudo password and hitting Enter, you will be dropped into a root shell. The prompt will be similar to this:

root@ubuntu-pc:/home/dave#

Any commands you type moving forward will be done using root privileges (so be careful!). When you are finished, you can simply press CTRL-D or type “exit” and hit Enter. This will drop you back into your regular user shell.

dave@ubuntu-pc:~$ sudo su
[sudo] password for dave:
root@ubuntu-pc:/home/dave# exit
dave@ubuntu-pc:~$

Both methods of running a root shell (this and the previous method) have their advantages and disadvantages. I leave it to the reader to decide works best for them.

How to uninstall newer versions of Internet Explorer

Some web applications are picky about the browser you need to use.  Websites and web-based applications will usually tell you what they are designed for and what you should access them with.  Niche applications tend to be especially picky as smaller development teams can’t optimize complex web-based apps for the gamut of browsers available.

One of the most common issues seems to be Internet Explorer being upgraded through Windows Update causing compatibility problems.  Luckily it’s fairly simple to “downgrade” to a version that works best with what you need to access.  The installation is a little bit tougher to find than most installed programs, but not by much.

First off, go to the Control Panel on your system.  This can be found by clicking the “Start” button, then selecting Control Panel from the Start menu.  From the Control Panel, select “Uninstall a program” if the view is set to Category (default for Windows 7), or select “Programs and Features” from either the Small Icons or Large Icons view.

Now select “View installed updates”

Sort the list by Name by left-clicking on the “Name” tab.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.  The Internet Explorer update will always be at the bottom of the list when sorted by Name.

Select Windows Internet Explorer 10 (or Windows Internet Explorer 9 if going from 9 to 8) and then click on Uninstall.  Your system will need to be restarted, but this will revert you to the previous version if you need to do so for compatibility with websites or web-based applications.

If your print job is “stuck” and you can’t cancel or delete it, try this: manually clearing the print spooler. (Windows)

A little background: when you send the command to print a file, Windows “spools” those files – it creates a temporary copy for the printer’s use.  This allows the printer to access the file at its own rate, and continues the job even if you (hypothetically) close the program or file you have open.  Sometimes, for various reasons that aren’t particularly relevant to this article, printers will fail to successfully complete a job.  Usually, you can just cancel the job or delete it from the printer’s queue – the easiest way to access this is to double-click the icon that looks like a printer in the rightmost area of the Windows taskbar.

The following window will appear showing your print job(s) and their status.  You can right click on these and pause, restart, cancel, and basically manage the individual entries.

When a failed print job cannot be removed this way, or if the job just seems stuck, we can force Windows to remove it and restart the “service” that Windows uses to send data to printers.

To do this, click on the “Start” button, and just begin typing the letters CMD.  Windows will find and present a program called “cmd.exe.”  Right click on this item (the icon is a black window with white letters saying “C:\”) and select “Run as Administrator.”

Copy and paste or type the following commands in this order
(to paste in this command line window, right click on the title bar -> Edit -> Paste)

The commands – be sure to include everything within the quotations:

1. “net stop spooler”
2. “del /F /Q C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*”
3. “net start spooler”

You will see feedback after stopping and starting the spooler, but the second command simply removes all of the temporary “spooled” files in the Windows print system.  CMD.exe will not give you any indication that it performed a task after this line, but it will clear all spooled items.

Lastly, try printing your document again.  It will very likely print successfully.

Fixing a Corrupted Nickname Entry in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook maintains a list of formerly used email addresses which is used for the automatic completion feature. If one of these “nicknames” becomes corrupted it can cause any emails to that address to bounce. If this happens, the proper way to fix itis is to delete the corrupted entry and retype the email address in the To… field.

How to remove a corrupted nickname cache entry

1. Open a new email message.
2. Type the first few characters of the nickname cache entry that you want to remove from the cache.
3. When the entry appears in the list of suggested names, use the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlight to the entry you want to remove.
4. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it from the list.

Yikes! Cloud storage service Nirvanix apparently tells customers: We’re shutting down in two weeks

If this is true and your in a pinch, give us a call. We can provide migration assistance to our cloud and free unlimited bandwidth during the migration to assist you.

Colorado Wild Fires and Floods Impacting Customers

We love to help our customers become more proactive in protecting and securing their information and infrastructure and we have several methods in our approach to doing this right.  From enhanced physical security, network security, data protection, hosting and geographic redundancy solutions along with a managed service offering to care for any of these elements if you don’t have time to.  

All this being said, every time one of these natural disasters happen our phone begins to ring with someone in a panic.  Sometimes we can help and sometimes we can’t after the event has already occurred.  Don’t wait to deal with these emergencies after they happen.  Call us today so we can show you how to better protect and secure your information and infrastructure before you suffer data loss or an outage due to a natural disaster or the even more common event of simple human error/accidental deletion of information.  

• Hosting Solutions in our local Tier 3 Data Center
• Cloud Solutions Hosted in our 7 Data Centers across the US and Europe
• Cloud based Data Protection Solution including on-premise and geographic data redundancy
• Hosted or Cloud based Disaster Recovery targets and data replication / recovery Solutions
• Network Security Solutions, consulting and ongoing management of IDPS, log monitoring, firewall management etc…
• Operations Center to monitor and manage premise, hosted and our cloud based solutions with single point of contact and response team to provide on-site support when needed

Lewan Technology CTO – Managed and Cloud Services Interview

In this podcast, Scott Pelletier of Lewan Technology, offers insights and best practices on the challenges and benefits of managed IT services to help small to mid-sized business reduce risk, increase efficiency, and better align their business with IT infrastructure. Learn the important considerations around managed IT services when it comes to security, compliance, cloud, and data protection.

Sharefile SAML AD Authentication Fails on Chrome and Firefox

After configuring our ShareFile to integrate our AD accounts using AD FS 2.0 and SAML for login, we found several user could not log in with Chrome or Firefox.  They would go to the SAML login URL and then enter their correct AD credentials.  The login would then fail.  Using IE with the same credentials was successful.  After investigation, the issue was linked to AD FS 2.0 and Chrome/Firefox, not ShareFile.

The Solution below was found at http://exitcodezero.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/adfs-authentication-issues-with-chrome-and-firefox/

To correct the issues, disable Extended Protection in IIS on your ADFS server

1. Open IIS Manager on your ADFS Server
2. Expand your ADFS Server
3. Expand Sites
4. Expand Default Web Site
5. Expand adfs
6. Click to select ls
7. Double-click Authentication 
8. Right-click Windows Authentication and select Advanced Settings… 
9. Set Extended Protection to Off 
10. Restart IIS or perform an iisreset