SQL [sqlservr.exe] Memory Consumption on Small Business Server July 7, 2009
Posted by Gomez in IT, Microsoft, Performance & Alerts.Tags: allocated memory for sql, SBS, sql memory, sql server, sqlservr.exe
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I started receiving alarms that pages/sec on my client’s SBS Server was 6952.92 pages/sec. Please note that Microsoft Best Practices recommends no more than 20 pages/sec.
I found that sqlservr.exe was consuming in excess of 1.5GB of memory. This is been a known issues for Servers running Small Business Server, I will walk you through the process of reducing usage for this memory thirsty process.
1. Open Task Manager > Processes Tab, View Menu > Columns, select PID check box.
2. In the list of processes locate the sqlservr.exe process that is consuming the most memory (there might be multiple instances of sqlservr.exe) take note of the PID number next to the memory thirsty process.
3. Open a command prompt and issue the following command without the quotes,
“tasklist /svc” (this is used to display running processes (PIDs) and applications)
next to the PID number previously identified in taskmanager take note of the service name.
The service would be MSSQL$SBSMONITORING.
4. At the command prompt issue the following commands, after each command press enter;
Command 1: osql -E -S SERVERNAME\sbsmonitoring
(replace SERVERNAME with the hostname of your server, sbsmonitoring is the service name )
Command 2: sp_configure ‘show advanced options’,1
Command 3: reconfigure with override
Command 4: go
Command 1: sp_configure ‘max server memory’, 200
(200 represent memory size in MB, replace 200 with any memory size you wish, default is 2147483648)
Command 2: reconfigure with override
Command 3: go
How Save Outlook Auto Complete List June 18, 2009
Posted by Gomez in E-Mail, IT, Microsoft.Tags: Auto Complete List, Microsoft Office, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Outlook Cache
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Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 have a feature called Email Address Auto Complete. As you type in an email address into the TO:, BCC or CC: field outlook will display a list of matching email addresses from the outlook auto-complete cache.
Ok now we know what auto complete is, let located the file;
Close Outlook.
Open Windows Explorer and enter the following address in the Address bar: %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook (this is the same as drive:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook) Windows Explorer will update to the appropriate Outlook folder. In this folder you would see the .nk2 file(s). Now to explain every Microsoft Outlook profile will have its own .nk2 file e.g. the default profile name is outlook so you will see the outlook.nk2 file. Just make a copy backup of this file, that’s all to it, you are done!
If you are not too sure what your current profile(s) are you can open mail icon in control panel and on the Mail Setup – Outlook dialog box, client on Show profile, here you can see all your default profiles.
Now let’s say that on the computer you want to restore/replace the outlook.nk2 file has a different profile name e.g. exchangepro is the name of the profile on the target computer, all you need to do is navigate to: %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook, paste the outlook.nk2 file then rename it to profilename.nk2 (in this example exchangepro.nk2). Open Microsoft outlook and enjoy.
Where are my CALS? June 13, 2009
Posted by Gomez in IT, Microsoft, Network Services.Tags: Client Access Licenses, SBS 2003, SBS License Store, Small Business Server
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For all my fellow Small Business Server users, this week I was greeted with an issue with one of my client’s informing me that they are not able to access the mapped network drives “Connection to resource has exceeded maximum connections” After extensive searching in Event Viewer > System logs, I came across the following entry;
Event Type: Error
Event Source: SBCore
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1023
Date: 6/11/2009
Time: 7:08:27 PM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXXX
Description:
The license store for the client access licenses is not valid. Only the minimum number of client access licenses will be available until a valid license store is restored. For more information, see Help in the Licensing snap-in.
Open Server Management > Licenses, found that installed CALs (50 Client access licenses) disappeared leaving only the default “5”.
There are three main methods for restoring the License Store.
Method 1: If you had previously exported the license store after entering the CALS and activating them, you can simply restore that file.
Method 2: If you have the actual CAL codes you can re-enter and activate the CALS.
Method 3: If you have a backup of your system drive you can locate the file licstr.cpa which is located in %systemroot%/system32 folder. Simply replace this file on your affected system with the previously backed up licstr.cpa. (This method was the one that worked in my situation)
Now after you have restored the licstr.cpa file in its original location, be sure to restart the license logging service.
Word of caution for those who have not experience this issue, take a backup of your license store!
Cisco OSPF and Windows RRAS OSPF May 24, 2009
Posted by daakeung in Cisco, IT, Microsoft.Tags: cisco and windows ospf neighbours, cisco ios ospf, ISA OSPF, windows rras ospf
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I’ve been battling with getting Windows RRAS ospf and Cisco ios ospf to become neighbours for the past few days.
If you turn on ospf debug in windows and the following shows up :
Rejected an OSPF packet from x.x.x.x to 224.0.0.5 because the OSPF data length in the OSPF header was 48 but the length calculated from the IP Header fields was 60.
You should disable the following on the cisco ios:
router ospf 100
no capability lls
Also, if you are running ISA with RRAS you should disable “block fragmentation”
For more information:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc302678.aspx#NetworkAndRoutingIssues
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3/iproute/command/reference/ip2_c1g.html#wp1036468
Small Business Server 2003 POP3 Connector April 19, 2009
Posted by Gomez in E-Mail, IT, Microsoft.Tags: Email, POP3, POP3 Connector, Registry, SBS, Small Business Server
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Small Business Server 2003 users that use the POP3 Connector Manager and are affected by that annoying 15 minutes download interval, finally there is hope, here is a registry tweak to drop the interval from 15 minutes to 5 minutes;
FIRST. Take a backup of your registry
1. Open Regedit
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Micro soft/SmallBusinessServer/Network/POP3 Connector
3. Create a new “DWORD value” and type “ScheduleAccelerator” as the entry name
4. Select the DWORD and on the edit menu click modify, in the value box, type 3 and ensure the Decimal Radio button is clicked on the right.
(To determine the polling interval, the value that is configured on the “Scheduling” tab in the GUI is divided by the value that you type for the ScheduleAccelerator entry, example, if a 15 minute interval is specified in the GUI and you set the value of the ScheduleAccelerator entry to 3, the connector will poll ever five minutes, If you make it too short there can be problems with the POP3 connector starting a download before the previous download has started, it seems to work well with 5minutes)
5. Exit Regedit
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable April 9, 2009
Posted by Gomez in E-Mail, IT, Microsoft, Network Services.Tags: Email, Exchange Server, Microsoft, OWA
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After typing http://Server-name/exchange
You get the login box, after entering the correct user info you get the dreaded HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable, after searching the web for months and tried almost all available tutorials I finally found the solution. This problem (the scenario I experienced) it relates to permissions in the windows registry. Follow the steps below to get OWA working as normal.
1. Open regedit from the command prompt, ensure you take a backup of your current registry configuration. To export, on the file menu in registry editor click export and choose save destination
2. Locate and Right Click HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive and select Permissions
3. Click the Advanced button on the Permissions dialog box
4. Highlight CREATOR OWNER – make sure this is the user selected
5. Tick the box for Replace permission entries on all child objects
6. Click OK twice
7. Its best to restart the server, but if you are anxious just restart all exchange services
Changing the store limits in Exchange 2003 Standard SP2 March 9, 2009
Posted by Gomez in E-Mail, IT, Microsoft.Tags: exchange, ms exchange, storage limit, store limit
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Just a few months ago, i encountered several errors messages in event viewer regarding MS Exchange Information Store, I found that my clients exchange database had grown to 17GB, to fix this issue i installed Service Pack2 for exchange which allows the store limt to grow but does not change from default (16GB), below is the method to increase to store limt from 16GB to 75GB (maximum).
1. On the computer running Exchange Server, start Regedit.exe.
To configure the database size limit on a mailbox store, use the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\Server name\Private-Mailbox Store GUID
Create a new DWORD entry called “Database Size Limit in Gb” and give it the appropriate value for maximum database size in GB. For Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition type a value between 1 and 75 (the value represents in GB). For Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition type a value between 1 and 8000 (the default is 8000 GB). Click OK.
Note: Entries should be in decimal format.
Create a new DWORD entry called “Database Size Buffer in Percentage” and give it the appropriate value between 1 and 100 to specify when you want events to be logged in the application log in Event Viewer to warn you that you are nearing the maximum size for a database.
The default value of 10 (i.e. 10%) will result in warning events to be logged when you have 10 percent capacity left before you reach the maximum size for that database.
Create a new DWORD entry called “Database Size Check Start Time in Hours From Midnight” and give it the appropriate value between 0 and 23 to specify when you want Exchange to check the database size. The default value of 5 results in Exchange Server checking the database size 5 hours after midnight (i.e. 5:00 AM).
Close Registry Editor.
For this patch to work you must dismount your information store and remount, a reboot seems to work best.
How to enable Remote Desktop remotely February 28, 2009
Posted by daakeung in Microsoft.Tags: enable rdp remotely, rdp, remote desktop, windows xp
2 comments
Have you ever wanted to enable RDP remotely on a windows xp remote system ?
You can connect to the remote registry using regedit and change the fDenyTSConnection value from 1 to 0 under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal
this would enable RDP on the destination computer.
For some administrators, you might want to roll this setting out to active directory clients.
You can push this registry file out silently using the following reg file
——————————————————————————————————
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server]
“fDenyTSConnections”=dword:00000000
——————————————————————————————————
running regedit silently:
regedit /s rdp.reg
Resetting TCP/IP in Windows XP February 16, 2009
Posted by daakeung in IT, Microsoft.Tags: connectivity, tcp/ip, Windows
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I have recently gotten a problem on my laptop, where I get this message
“the network location cannot be reached. for information about network troubleshooting, see windows help”
when accessing network shares.
Sometimes TCP/IP Stack gets corrupted. Since this is a core part of the OS, reinstallation is not possible.
However you can reset the TCP/IP stack using this command.
netsh int ip reset c:\reset.txt
This will reset the TCP/IP stack in windows XP.
You can read more about this here : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299357&Product=winxp
ISA Server 2006 enterprise edition corrupted rule. January 26, 2009
Posted by daakeung in ISA Server, IT.Tags: firewall, Internet Security and acceleration server 2006 enterprise edition, ISA, microsoft isa
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Recently, ISA server had stop loading the firewall rules since it had become corrupted.
To remove the rule, you first need to find the GUID of the rule. Just search your registry for the rule and you will find the GUID associated with it.
Once you have the GUID, you then need to install ADAM ADSI EDIT
Connect to local host on port 2171
CN=FPC2
Then drill down through the arrays until you find that specific GUID and delete it.
That resolved the issue.
The reason why the rule became corrupt, I had 2 sessions to the ISA server with the firewall management opened.
I deleted the rule from one session and tried to disable it on the other. After which it stopped me from viewing the firewall rules.
Hope this helps someone.
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