Archive for the ‘time’ Category

Epidemic of servers not being able to sync their time

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

Hi Gang,

I don’t know if you have noticed or not (maybe you are not effected) but there seems to be an epidemic of servers not being able to sync their time recently.
I have found this little batch file to fix it for my client’s servers, you may want to change the time source to one local to you, I have had good luck with the one in the file.
This is for servers that have been working fine and all of a sudden just stopped, the M&M’s article on syncing time on SBS is still your best bet if you never got your time to sync on your network.

Here are the commands;

w32tm /configure /manualpeerlist:time-a.nist.gov,0×8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync
pause

Paste them to txt file and change the extension to cmd and save it on your server’s desktop you can just double-click to run the commands.
Watch the last command and make sure it says the sync was successful.

You can get a list of time servers from http://tf.nist.gov/service/time-servers.html

I have just spent the weekend in DST HE!!

Sunday, February 18th, 2007

Hi Gang,

I started to send this out to my group as an e-mail, but Mark Crall had just been asking me about a blog, and it reminded me I had signed up for this thing ages ago and never used it, so here we go.

Well I have just spent the weekend in DST HE!!

I really tried to follow along the directions outlined at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930879 but I don’t think they are possible to follow, well not successfully anyways.
Of course your circumstances may be different but here is what worked for me for my SBS servers.

I started Friday and made sure all my wsus servers were sync’d and then I approved all the updates to be installed early Saturday morning.
Saturday morning early I let the server updates install and rebooted all the servers. I spent the rest of Saturday banging my head against the wall trying to get the script to run, reading more docs than I ever care to again, and not having any success. I went to bed horribly frustrated. I figured I was just tired and not thinking clearly. Sunday morning after an hour of banging my head again, I decided to try another approach.

Since I could never get the script they supplied to run, I finally gave up and did it the old fashioned way.
I went into ESM and removed the explicit denies on the admin accounts and granted the administrator (the 500 account) full rights on the entire exchange server. If you don’t know how to do this, no problem read about it here http://www.petri.co.il/grant_full_mailbox_rights_on_exchange_2000_2003.htm

Then I installed Outlook Time Zone Data Tool on a workstation (note after it installs it wants to run, just cancel it), get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e343a233-b9c8-4652-9dd8-ae0f1af62568&DisplayLang=en

I then created a outlook profile on the workstation I had installed the tool on, using the domain administrator account and set it to be the default, don’t forget to uncheck cached mode (hint if you want to keep this profile make a copy of it, the exchange tool does not leave it clean, when you are done you can delete the default profile and replace it with your clean copy).

Then I followed the very well done instructions supplied by the exchange team at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/02/14/435267.aspx
Of course to follow these you will need the LegacyDN tool to verify your ldap string, get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5EF7786B-A699-4AAD-B104-BF9DE3F473E5&displaylang=en
And while your downloading grab the Exchange Calendar Update Tool, get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A9336886-4B28-4010-9416-36D38429438D&displaylang=en, you will need it also. Don’t forget, do not install it in the default directory, there is a bug if you do it will not work.

By following this approach I was able to update 5 servers with only one error that I know of so far :>)
Oh Ya, if you run CRM there will be a tool to update it on Feb 28th, read about it here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925874

Andy Goodman, SBS-MVP, SBSC, MSA, MPAN
~Founding Father SMBTN Triad NC Group
~Co-Author Advanced Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices
~Owner DownHome Computers
~Host of the Global SBS Chat
~A.K.A HandyAndy on the SBS forum
~”If you can’t find the key to success, pick the lock.”~~~~~Author Unknown