SCayr

I recently came across this problem and struggled to find a fix, so now I’ve found one, here it is.

I had done a Swing Migration from SBS 2000 to SBS 2003 a few months ago and thought I’d caught all the gotchas, but after enabling OMA came across another bug in the process.

The problem is that any user that existed before the migration can’t access OMA, any user created post-migration has no problems.

If you test with IE by browsing to HTTP://SERVER/OMA you receive the following error.

A System Error has occurred.

In the Event Log you get this error.

MSExchangeOMA Error 1503

An unknown error occurred while processing the current request:
Message: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: startIndex
Source: mscorlib

The problem lies in the fact that the HomeMTA attribute for the original user is pointing to a deleted object.

In order to fix the problem you have to use ADSIEdit. (Don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing!)

In ADSIEdit, browse to the users container and right-click on a working user and select properties, go down the list till you find homeMTA and double-click it. Copy the contents. You’ll notice it starts with…

CN=Microsoft MTA,CN=SERVERNAME......

Next get properties of one of the faulty users, find homeMTA. It contains the wrong value, starting…

CN=Microsoft MTA\0ADEL

Paste the correct value, hit OK, and you’re good to go.  No reboots or service restarts required.

Sphere It

I’m looking into starting an IT Support company based in Ayr, and feel a little market research is in order.

The current plan is to offer support to both Home Users and Businesses, with the option of a monthly fee for ongoing maintenance.

Here are my questions:

1. What would be considered a fair hourly rate? £20, £30, £40 or more?
2. Should I even be considering an hourly rate? Would a flat fee per job type be a better option?
3. Does the Microsoft Certification warrant charging a higher rate?
4. Should there be a different hourly rate for businesses?
5. What would be the best wat to price an ongoing maintenance contract?

Please feel to leave a comment with your thoughts or suggestions, any feedback would be much appreciated.

Steven

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So another BT Router (en5861) blew up! It was replaced with a Netgear DG384 and everything was looking fine. Apart from one thing - a Netgear FVS318 sits on the network and creates a VPN Tunnel to a sub-office, allowing them to connect to a terminal server. The VPN was up, but a ping showed packet loss of 40% and noone at the sub-office could connect to the Terminal Server.

After much head scratching and googling I found the solution and thought I’d share it. (Or at least keep a record for when it happens again and I don’t remember what the fix was )

The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) setting on the router was set to 1492, and was set to 1500 on the VPN Endpoints. I found a couple of articles suggesting packet fragmentation was causing the problem because the MTU on the firewall was bigger than that on the router.

I set the 318s MTU to 1400 at both ends and suddenly 0% packet loss! Great, got the sub-office to try Remote Desktop, but this still didn’t work. A bit of trial and error later, and the magic number for MTU we found was 1472.

With the reliability of the EN5861 I’m sure this is something that’s happened before and will happen again. Has anyone else had similar problems or different cures?

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Everyone’s going on about a supposedly secret encryption key, the powers that be in the US are stamping their feet and forcing sites to remove the information. The encryption scheme was cracked months ago, but now sites like Digg have started removing pages and accounts referencing the code.

I’m not a lawyer, or very knowledgeable on the US Constitution, but doesn’t the First Amendment cover this?

So, since a number can’t be copyrighted and there’s nothing preventing it, here it is…..

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

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When Windows XP was released 128 Megabytes of RAM was adequate, in fact most in branded machines this was the default. If you’ve since installed all the recommended updates this is now nowhere near enough!

Microsoft still quote 64MB as the minimum, but in reality 256MB is required with 512MB being a more comfortable amount.

With 256MB of RAM now retailing for around £20, it’s definately a worthwhile upgrade to consider.

Sphere It

Yes, that’s right. There is an easy way. In fact it’s so obvious and easy that it’s often overlooked.
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