Search is not working in the Outlook Desktop App or Outlook Web App? Check the ContentIndexState of your Mailbox Database on Exchange 2013. I’ve seen two errors and have found for both of them a solution. First error: Name : Mailbox Database 090767xxxxSERVER ContentIndexState : FailedAndSuspended ContentIndexErrorMessage : The content index is corrupted. ContentIndexBacklog : ContentIndexRetryQueueSize : ContentIndexMailboxesToCrawl : ContentIndexSeedingPercent : ContentIndexSeedingSource : In a single server setup follow these steps to reseed the Content Index: Run the following commands to stop the Microsoft Exchange Search and Microsoft Exchange Search Host Controller services. Stop-Service MSExchangeFastSearch Stop-Service HostControllerService Delete, move, or rename the folder that contains the…
A common question in forums about Group Policy Objects is how to exclude (deny) a GPO for certain users or a security group. However, there are multiple other ways to have the GPO only apply to certain users (link only to certain OUs, security filtering, item-level targeting, etc), the method shown in this post should only be used as a last resort. First open Group Policy Management from the Server Manager Tools or Administrative Tools. Select the GPO that need some exclusions and open the Delegation tab. Click on Advanced… Click on Add… Select the Active Directory objects for which…
After the installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express I encountered a problem that the services could not be started. It seems that the installation have set the paths to the model, MSDB and tempdev to the wrong location. After uninstall the SQL Server instance and reinstalling it, the problem persists. No settings are altered in the setup properties, also I could not reproduce this same error on another server even using the same deployment image for the Azure VM. The solution is to change the paths to those 3 databases to the right location with starting the instance in…
As more and more webservers on the internet are disabling SSLv3, because of the Poodlebleed Bug (OpenSSL Announcement, PDF), It is maybe time to disable it aswell in your on-premise environment. In this article I’ll show how to disable this protocol for Microsoft Windows Servers with a simple registry key. Although SSL 3.0 is almost 15 years old, many servers and web browsers still use it today. When web browsers fail at connecting on a newer SSL version (i.e. TLS 1.0, 1.1, or 1.2), they may fall back to a SSL 3.0…
After making a reference image of a Windows 8.1 installation and updating it, we wanted to clean up the installation. There are a few methods that can be used, such as using Disk Cleanup GUI and select Windows Update Cleanup, or run the StartComponentCleanup (found under MicrosoftWindowsServicing) in Task Scheduler but using the CLI to achieve this is much cooler and you have stronger options. As shown in the picture, we have updated the computer with all latest patches with PowerShell, see my previous post. And after no more updates are available we used DISM to clean up everything.…
When you need to customize an installation of Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 and enter audit mode you can’t install any updates with the Windows Update GUI, it’s getting stuck at checking for updates. This is because Windows Update is locked when the when the audit mode/OOBE is still in progress. When checking the logfiles of Windows Update (WindowsUpdate.log) it show this: Windows OOBE is still in progress. AU deferring detection WARNING: BeginDetection failed, hr:0x8024a008 All AU searches complete. # WARNING: Failed to find updates with error code 8024a008 AU setting next…
You got a virusscanner and maybe also some other mitigation tools to protect your or company computers, but still viruses and malware can get thru into the system. Here is a method to create an extra layer of defense for your systems. We’ll be using Software Restriction Policies that can be found in the Local Security Policy for standalone PC’s or in the Group Policy Management for domain joined systems. We will be gonna use this for blocking executables from %APPDATA% and %USERPROFILE% directories, but also from compressed archives that can be mailed with an executable…
After following several tutorials on internet for installing MDT 2013 (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit), you’ll see when you come to the rules section of the “DeploymentShare” properties they define a TimeZone and TimeZoneName variable. Most of those tutorials using “Pacific Standard Time”, but in Europe you probably want to use another Zone, but what are the values that can be used for those two? In this post you’ll find a complete table with all the possible options. Example of the rules: SkipComputerName=YES SkipDomainMembership=YES SkipUserData=YES SkipCapture=YES DoCapture=NO SkipLocaleSelection=YES…