IE9 Beta Crashes on every page with Intel Express 4 Chipset Graphics

I have a Dell Lattitude E5400 running Windows 7 x64 and decided to try the IE9 beta that has just been released. Unfortuneatly, the browser crashed on every page load. After some investigation I found it was caused by my graphics driver. The E5400 uses the Intel GMA graphics driver from the Express 4 chipset.

Problem driver version was 8.15.10.2141.

Working driver version is 8.15.10.2202.

You can get the new driver here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/19336/a08/Win7Vista_64_151711.exe&DwnldId=19336&lang=eng 

Connnect bug is here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/599630/running-internet-explorer-9-with-gpu-accelleration-crashes-the-browser

Exchange 2007 Backup Woes

We use Exchange 2007 and backup using CommVault Simpana 8.0. We had an issue with a store that ran out of disk space, and then dismounted. The store logs were moved to another drive and the store mounted again. From this point on, backups (full or incremental) failed with CommVault with the following error:
Error Code: [28:163] Description: The Exchange server returned the following error message: [0x50d] - [Unknown]. Api: [HrESEBackupSetup()], Item: [Fourth Storage Group]

NTBackup could backup the store but took 20 hours compared to ComMVaults just over 2.

Investigating the event log produced an event id 9840 with error 1293:
An attempt to prepare the storage group 'Fourth Storage Group' for backup failed because the storage group is already in the process of being backed up. The error code is 1293. (Note that if a backup was recently aborted, then it may take several minutes for the system to detect the aborted backup and initiate backup cleanup procedures, so this message may be generated if an attempt was made to backup a storage group before a previous backup attempt had fully terminated.)

Turns out, the store filled during a backup leaving the backup in progress flag set. NTBackup works because it uses the old Exchange backup API's, not the VSS backup used by CommVault.

The fix was to dismount and then mount the affected store. 

Ubuntu x64 10.04 - Inital issues

Decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 using an in place upgrade - This failed horribly. There were several errors to do with likewise-open (my laptop belongs in a Windows AD domain). The final one told me that it had left my distro in an unusable state (some 3 hours into the upgrade).

I took the opportunity to reinstall the x64 version of 10.04 but ran into a few issues.

1. The Citrix ICA client install is complicated somewhat by the x64 architecture. The ICA client assumes you're running an x86 environment with 32 libs and a 32bit browser. It's fairly easy to work round - See the previous post.

2. The Cisco VPN client is a bit flakey. I can connect fine from the command line using vpnc, but the Gnome GUI hardly ever works. Sometimes it asks me for the password, only to fail the connection. Sometimes it doesn't ask me anyhting, just tells me the connection has failed. Sometimes it does nothing at all. I would prefer to use the GUI because you get a nice visual app showing if you're connected to the VPN or not.

Citrix Receiver on Ubuntu 9.10 x86

1. Install libmotif3
sudo apt-get install libmotif3

2. Create libXm.so.4 as needed by the Citrix receiver
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libXm.so.3.0.2 libXm.so.4

3. Download the Citrix receiver as a TGZ file from www.citrix.com

4. Extract this to a tmp directory and install
cd ~/Downloads
mkdir /tmp/citrix
cp linuxx86-11.100.158406.tar.gz /tmp/citrix/
cd /tmp/citrix
tar xvf  linuxx86-11.100.158406.tar.gz
sudo ./setupwfc

5. Follow the prompts - This is quite straight forward

6. Stop the EULA showing (As a blank dialog box)
 touch ~/.ICAClient/.eula_accepted

This now allows me to run Citrix apps through the web interface using Firefox.

Things still to fix:
Fix ugly Citrix GUI font
Authenticate to Xenapp View
Run access in Chrome

Changes for x64:
I had to download libmotif3 manually and copy stuff into lib32
This post helped a lot:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=333534

Get Device Manager to show non-present devices as hidden devices

Start a command prompt and set the following variable:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Start Device manager from the command line:

devmgmt.msc

On the view menu, click Show hidden devices.
More info here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539

Error installing Dell OpenManage Server Administrator 6.1.0

First I had an error saying Windows Remote Management wasn't installed. I got it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=845289ca-16cc-4c73-8934-dd46b5ed1d33&DisplayLang=en

Second problem was this error:

"The installer has detected that HTTPs Listener is not enabled for Windows Remote Management. Enable HTTPs Listener for Windows Remote Management to use Standards Remote Management capabilities. See "Remote Enablement Requirements" section in the Installation and Security User's Guide for detailed information. Note: Remote Enablement is applicable only for systems that support Server Instrumentation."

This led to this post:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384372(VS.85).aspx

The fix was to run:

winrm quickconfig

This enabled an HTTP listener, but not an HTTPS one. Re-reading the above url, this worked:

winrm quickconfig -transport:https

ActiveSync - Guest only

To force an ActiveSync to allow guest only access (therefore with no prompts) carry out the following registry edits:

HKLM \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft\Windows CE Services

Add a new DWORD Value called ‘GuestOnly’ with a value of ‘1’

Blog off the air - Oops!

My blog has been off the air for a while. I moved the blog to a new server and recreated the domain.

Turns out the account used to run the blog needed modify access to C:\Windows\Temp - Looks ok for now!

Transistion to Cloud Servers

I'm moving all my locally hosted content to cloud based servers. So far I have moved my email to Google Apps For Your Domain and I have created a new blog (no content yet) to replace this one.

The Gmail move went pretty well as all I had to do was update MX, SPF and some CNAME records. The only non-working part was the start page as Google seem to have dropped support for this. I had actually setup apps before this limitation was implied, and I can activate the start page but it just doesn't work. There are others who mention this and the work-round seems just to use a Google Sites page if you want this. In fact there's quite a complete template for sites, just for this. I don't really need it anyways.

The blog will move slower. I have moved it off to a smaller sevrer for now and I'm trying to find a way to export the posts from CommunityServer to Blogger. I may just have to use the smaller server to setup redirects to the new blog.