We have a Bonded ADSL solution for our servers to provide the necessary upstream transfer speeds for the applications we host. We have bonded ADSL because our exchange still doesn't support SDSL, and a leased line is overkill. Theoretically, we should have 28.1 Mbps download and 3.2Mbps upload - what I am actually seeing is about 1.7Mbps down and 1.9Mbps up. I have tested this on various servers, over various times and file sizes, there is no doubt that the performance is POOR.

Anyway, on to my point. I wanted to create a file that was exactly 100MB to test transfer speeds. Windows XP, Vista, 2003 and 2008 all have a command line utility called FSUTIL.exe which has a subset of commands to manipulate files, with which you can create a file that is exactly 100MB...like so:

FSUTIL FILE CREATENEW 100MBTest.mdb 1048576

Usage: FSUTIL FILE CREATENEW [Filename] [Size in bytes]

 Nice!

Outlook Web access is a fantastic tool for our company, providing on-the-go access to people's mailboxes - which is of course secured by SSL and uses Forms Based Authentication. Internally, we have an intranet portal that allows us to access the various systems - one of which is OWA. One of the stipulations for this internal portal is that it is all Single Sign On using NTLM authentication - integrated authentication. This is where the problem lies because enabling OWA with Forms Based Authentication over SSL disables Integrated Authentication. So our choice is to have users enter their credentials twice (not acceptable) or to disable FBA and have external users log on with the annoying pop-up.

OR...

You can create a copy of the /Exchange and /Public Virtual Directories and configure them to use Integrated Authentication. You can also restrict access to them by IP...here's how:

 I'm assuming you've already set up OWA with SSL on your Exchange server. If you need to do that, try How do I configure OWA to use SSL? at Daniel Petri's site

1. Log onto your Exchange Server, and open up the IIS control panel. Locate your /Exchange and /Public virtual directories.
2. Right click /Exchange, select "All Tasks" and then "Save Configuration to a File..."
   
3. Go through the dialogue, save to a file and if you're worried about security, add a password.
4. Once you're done, right click any white space in the root web site (or the exchange web site) and select "New", then select "Virtual Directory (from file)..."
   
5. You will be presented with the "Import Configuratio" dialogue, click "Browse..." and select the file you've just created. Click "Read File" and select the Exchange location underneath
   
6. Click "OK" and you'll be asked to provide a new name, or replace the existing Virtual Directory - select create a new one and put an appropriate name (I uses ExchangeIA)
   
7. Now, this step is optional, but read on anyway because you might want to think about it. I only want to allow people on my network to access this using Integrated Authentication, no one else, so I am going to restrict access to the Virtual Directory that I've just created to my IP subnet. To do this right click the newly created Virtual Directory (ExchangeIA) and select the "Directory Security" tab. Under "IP address and domain name restrictions" click "Edit". Now select "Denied access" to deny anyone other than the exceptions, then click "Add.." and enter the details of your network to allow those computers access.
   
8. Now head back to step 1 and repeat for the /Public folder, if Integrated Authentication is required for Public Folders.
   

I noticed a post over at David Overton's blog today that highlights a new release of Windows Search. Normally not that exciting, but it is if you're using Outlook to open up another users mailbox.

I have quite a few mailboxes that are opened for historical reasons, people leave a company and I need access to their email. I don't want to bloat my mailbox with all their email, it's hard enough to find my own emails!

Previously, I've not been able to index the other people's mailboxes, this is a distinct bonus!

David's post is here: http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2008/06/08/upgrade-windows-search-to-version-4-0-and-improve-your-pc-for-windows-vista-xp-server-2003-and-2008.aspx

Had an interesting one yesterday, my bosses Vista laptop booted as per normal, making all the right pictures until just before the log in prompt popped up, then a black screen in what looked to be VGA graphics with the white default arrow cursor.

Corrupted graphics drivers, I thought. A quick boot into safe mode...but no, the same black screen and over-sized pointer.

No problem, Last Known Good Configuration will save my day...except that LKGC points are set when the OS manages a successful boot, and Vista had, in it's own opinion, successfully booted. The same problem occurred.

Googling around I found hundreds of posts describing similar problems, fewer, but still quite a lot had the same problem. There were no solutions for the symptoms that I was facing; that always begins to worry me because it's very unlikely that I can fix something that no-one else can!

After several more hours Googling and trying various different recovery options, I came accross a very succinct and to the point technet article - KB946532. Apparently Vista's fairly unknown Transactional NTFS has a bug which, if you're unlucky enough to see, will "occur because of file system corruption within the $Txf directory. This corruption causes a deadlock condition between the Transactional NTFS (TxF) process and the Autocheck process." In short, you're screwed.

System Restore points don't fix this problem. There's no way of preventing this error, which will render your Vista install inoperable. Helpfully, MS suggest you reinstall Vista in parallel to your current install. They also mention that it's fixed in SP1, which is the most compelling reason to install SP1 that I've heard.

Right now I feel a little like I'm playing Russian roulette with my fleet of Vista laptops, but do I really want to force an early adoption of SP1?

Originally posted Monday, November 26th, 2007

Originally posted Monday, November 26th, 2007

Incredibly irritating error when you go to install under your user account when you’re using mapped drives for your documents. All our domain users have a userfolder on the server, it’s mapped as z:\ and there is a folder redirection set up. It’s pretty standard in a corporate/domain environment, so why does it cause so many Vista installations to fail?

This is something I’ve run into time and time again and There are a couple of things you can try…sometimes they work individually, sometimes not!