Terminal Services - User cannot access network drives

Our IT Support desk received a request to fix the following problem:

Users logging into terminal services could not access the network drives.

We checked the workstation service.

This was stopped. This has to be running to allow a string of services to run to allow access to the network. Once this is enabled it worked!

The server has to be logged on to the workstation user to allow it to work.

Antivirus 2010 Issue

The IT Support desk received a call this morning, a client was complaining that they couldn’t open or download any exe files. This was a problem as to run malware bytes or any AV software we need to download said software.

We found however that the virus was locked to the logged on user so tried running programs as an administrator.

This worked like a treat, so we ran all tools as this and cleaned the virus and registry errors

Entourage Lost All Mail and Email Settings

The IT Support desk had a call from a client saying that a machine of their had lost all mail and they could not send any new mail on a piece of software they use called Entourage.

The profile was as if it had been factory reset there was no evidence of there ever being a profile installed. However the disk space used showed otherwise.

After checking if there was a lost + found folder and finding nothing existed, we decided to search for the data. We couldn’t find anything until we checked for Microsoft User Data folder. In the folder we found 2 of these. A decision was made to copy the larger of the 2 and overwrite the current one.

This worked succesfully and the mail profile and all data reappeared.

Appiam Start Filming

Appiam IT Support have started filming for their new youtube video. Footage will include the Appiam office and the team.

MDaemon to Exchange

We have a migration planned for one of our clients. They are currently running 20 odd PC's on a Windows workgroup, with eMail being handled by Alt-N's MDaemon server system. We have convinced them to migrate over to Microsoft Exchange 2007, which will involve remapping all PC's to a domain setup. There is no built in tool or even a 3rd party app that will handle the mail migration so it looks..... PST export/import is the only way!

IT Support

Where did the emails go?

It was a strange day, it was quiet... too quiet. There were no new emails all morning, which is unusual. Not even any spam. It was time to investigate.

We logged on to the exchange server to see what the problem was. We started by checking if the information store was mounted, it was. Next obvious move was to restart the system attendant and the information store services. Still nothing. So we checked disk space, there very little hard drive space left. So it was time to clear some space and for the machine to be restarted.

The machine came back up and everything was fine. There's nothing in the event viewer, no sign on the machine that there was ever a problem. Strange, but fixed.

IT Support

Entire Network Cannot Access Shared Drives

We recently had a rather unusual problem. All users at one of clients could not access any of the shared drives, though could a few days before hand. There was nothing wrong in windows file sharing on any of the PC's.

The specific errors were:

Trying to access \\192.168.1.2 we got "Network path not found"

We then tried to ping -a 192.168.1.2 and it resolves to server name.

So we tried accessing \\domain.local and got "\\domain.local is inaccessible. You might not have permissions to use this network resource"


We then recreated all default group policies, changed SBS login scripts, reset all share permissions

This did nothing so here is what are the next steps we tried to do to get to the root of this evilness.

Disabled Offloading from NIC and from registry.

Created registry key maxpoolusage at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management with value 60.Uninstalled IE8. Put the system in clean boot and rebooted the server.

netdiag and dcdiag showed the following errors :

Failed to enumerate DCs by using the browser. [ERROR_NETNAME_DELETED] (Netdiag)

An net use or LsaPolicy operation failed with error 64, Win32 Error 64 (Dcdiag)


So we Followed kb 887303 and set:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters requiresecuritysignature=0

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanworkstation\parameters requiresecuritysignature=0


We then tried to stop netlogon renamed netlogon.dns and netlogon.dnb. We checked DNS and deleted the GUID of A records.

Ran netdiag/fix.

Ensured all the services DFS TCP/IP Netbios Helper Netlogon server Workstation are running.

Performed ipconfig/flushdns and ipconfig/registerdns.

We then checked and GUID were back in DNS console.

We the tried to open \\domain.local and got "\\domain.local is inaccessible.You might not have permissions to use this network resource".

So we followed kb 946937.


Next we uninstalled kb 951748.

This didn't work so it was back to the google trawl.

Next we followed http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/07/17/some-services-may-fail-to-start-or-may-not-work-properly-after-installing-ms08-037-951746-and-951748.aspx

and created reserved ports value as mentioned in the article at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\ReservedPorts

then rebooted the server and tried to access \\domain.local and got "\\domain.local is inaccessible.You might not have permissions to use this network resource".


This was now becoming iritating and so it was back to the drawing board.

So we checked the permissions on NTFS on c: and sysvol structure.

Ran the command secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose and this was stucked on 4% while we waited for one and half hour. Finally terminated it.

Ran dcgpofix which failed with error "unable to read EFS certificate from registry.pol file of Default domain policy configuration information could not be read from the domain controller either because machine is unavailable or access has been denied"

Another dead end. Running out ideas we descided to uninstall NOD32 and remote backup application failed to uninstall. Rebooted the server.

Tried to access \\domain.local and we were able to browse it.

Tested from client machines and that worked as well.

And there we go NOD was to blame, the latest update kicked all the group policies out.

Again I hope this helps someone out there.

IT Support

IT Support SBS 2003 to 2008 Migration Fiasco

We recently did a migration of Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 to 2008 and Exchange 2003 to 2007 and encountered a rare error. There were no posts anywhere on this problem so I've decided that I shall enlighten anyone else who encounters this.

We ended up spending over a week trying to fix this and ended up having to get Microsoft envolved, at a cost of £200. The problem was that Outlook clients were unable to connect to their mailboxes and recieved the following error "Unable to open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server computer with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your offline folder file". What really through us off and even Microsoft is that users could access thier mail via Outlook Web Access (OWA).

It turns out that this was due to a setup failure for the Mailbox Server Role. This failure was due to invalid smtp address format for several mail-enabled public folder objects. Example:

OfflineAddressBook-/o=FirstOrganization/cn=addrlists/cn=name@domain.local

where "OfflineAddressBook-/o=FirstOrganization/cn=addrlists/cn=name" is an invalid alias format.

To fix this we did a full backup of the mailboxes and then mail-disabled each one of the public folders that had this problem. We then reran the installation of the mailbox server role.

I hope this helps someone out there.

IT Support
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