I got a kick out of this. Yesterday someone decided to ask Siri what the best cell phone is.
Siri responded back saying it’s the Cyan color Nokia Lumia 900. How funny is that? Apparently since this hit the internet Apple has since changed the response to not advertise their biggest competitor!
Check out the original article and a screenshot of Siri’s answer over at wmppoweruser:
http://wmpoweruser.com/siri-knows-which-is-the-best-phone-ever-and-its-not-the-iphone/
For the longest time I’ve been dealing with a server that hasn’t been playing nice. Regularly the server will freeze when either creating VSS snapshots, or deleting them!
These usually happen at 6:00AM or 12:00PM (when I have them scheduled) and can sometimes lock the server up for close to 30 minutes. I’ve spent HOURS investigating this, resulting with absolutely no errors, no nothing, except for that some services might fail due to the freeze if I’m actually logged in to the server.
Typically, this behavior only starts happening 1-2 weeks after a fresh reboot. Rebooting the server stops this issue for 1-2 weeks. And keep in mind, as I said absolutely no errors in the event log that point to what is causing this.
The Server runs fully updated/patched Windows Server 2008, has 16GB of RAM, 2 X 6-core processors and SAS disks, so it’s nothing related to performance.
Finally after months I have found out what the culprit is in my case: Turns out that Symantec Endpoint Manager (not the anti-virus, but the management software) was actually causing or agitating this issue. When logging in, I noticed that Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager was somewhat sluggish, and not functioning properly, I restarted the services, and BAM out of nowhere VSS process decides to deleted the oldest snapshot for C:. When this happened the server freezed. I repeated this 4 times to confirm, all in the same morning. I’m not sure why it was triggering snapshot removal, but it was odd.
I proceed to upgrade Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager on that server later that week. During the upgrade (I upgraded to a new 11.x released, then later to 12.x), I noticed that every time the services were restarted automatically as part of the database upgrade process, that the VSS issue would occur and the server would become unresponsive.
We are now running at 12.x on that system, and have not had any reported freeze-ups. It’s been over a week and a half, and it looks like the issue is resolved.
Since I’ve been using Windows Phone since it’s release, I’ve heard of something called “Local Scout” that a lot of American’s talk about, but yet it’s not on my Rogers Windows Phone. I’ve tried searching for the app, info, etc… only to find that it’s not available in Canada.
Here’s a neat little hack to enable “Local Scout” that I figured out:
1) Go to “Settings”, then “Region+Language”.
2) At the very bottom (and you only need to change this one setting), change “Browse & search language” to “English (United States).
3) Get out of settings, go to your home screen with your Tiles and hit the “Bing” button, you should now notice 4 buttons at the bottom, one of the new ones being “Local Scout”.
Have Fun!
Well, the other night I accidentally destroyed my Samsung Focus to the point of no return. I live by my phone, and I’d die without it so I had to replace it A.S.A.P.
As most of you regular readers already know, I’m a die hard Microsoft mobile enthusiast. I’ve been using their devices since before the iPhone even existed… And I’ve been more then happy with all their smartphone operating systems, especially the new Windows Phone 7.
Even though Windows Phone 7 isn’t that popular in Canada (I’m assuming this is because most of the providers don’t really try to sell them) I decided to call up the local Best Buy store to see if they had any new Nokia Lumia 900s in stock. To my surprise they did! They had two!
With less then 20 minutes till close I rushed to the store and picked one up. Got home, plugged it in and it was play time. Unfortunately Rogers Corporate customer care is closed at night so I couldn’t activate the new MicroSIM till the next morning. But that didn’t really matter considering I wanted to play with the phone, not make calls.
Comparing this to some of the 1st Gen phones (in my case the Samsung Focus):
1) I finally have a front facing camera! And it works great! I loaded up Skype, and it works beautifully (both over WiFi and LTE). 40% of the time I’ve been using my new phone I’ve been Skyping people haha. Video calling on Skype has high video quality, no lag (even over LTE), and just works SLICK!
2) Faster processor – the interface on WP7 has always been slick, however certain small things like the keyboard not keeping up with my typing, or application slow load times, or the delay going back and resuming an application from the background has bugged me. These issues don’t exist on the Lumia 900.
3) New phones (the Lumia 900) are bigger, and easier to type for people with big hands and figures like me!
This is somewhat unrelated and a side not, but previously my old Samsung Focus camera button didn’t work and there was also a defect in the touchscreen so i avoided typing, emails, and texting at all costs (i didn’t want to send it in since the devices my provider sends back are always usually in worst shape the the busted one you originally sent them from my experience). With my new Lumia 900, I can’t stop texting, e-mailling, and typing!
Let’s get back to the Nokia Lumia 900. Overall, the phone rocks. Its fast, designed nicely, and has all the features you could need and use. Nokia even has their own WP7 apps, which I had a chance to try and can actually see myself using them.
Now before I leave, I do want to mention I have observed two issues with this phone.
1) When the backlight is on low (either automatic or you manually set it) the screen gets a purple or brown tint to it. Its ugly, makes pictures look horrible, and the keyboard turns full purple. I don’t know what’s causing this but other people are reporting it so I hope its software and not hardware. If it’s software, they should easily be able to issues a software or firmware update.
2) The vibrate function on the phone rattles. Some people report it being certain things such as buttons, I’ve identified mine to being the camera button, and another thing internally which I can’t see. Its annoying, but it’s not a deal breaker.
I leave you with this: If the purple screen issue turns out to be software, I would recommend this phone to everyone and anyone! Its awesome! If it turns out the purple issue is hardware, I’d say hold off.
PS. This phone is so slick, I actually wrote this entire blog post from the WordPress app on my Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone.
UPDATE (April 29th, 2012): I reached out to a bunch of different twitter addresses for WindowsPhone, Nokia, etc… and I received a response back from NokiaHelps (@NokiaHelps on Twitter). They told me to take my phone back to the retailer. I went back today, and took the phone in. The people at Best Buy confirmed there was an issue and replaced the phone. Unfortunately on the new unit, once I got home and plugged it in, I got the purple screen right off the bat. So now I sit here, wondering if all Lumia 900s have this issue and if I should return it for a full refund and move away from Windows Phone (considering my provider has no other latest gen Windows Phones).
UPDATE (April 30th, 2012): I told NokiaHelps on twitter that I took the device back to the retailer as they suggested and got a new device which also had the same issue. They responded back and mentioned this issue is under investigation. Hopefully we can get this fixed. I would LOVE to keep this phone, it’s awesome!
UPDATE #2 (April 30th, 2012): I returned the second Lumia 900 to the Best Buy store where I purchased it and received a refund. I decided to go around the city and check every Best Buy and Futureshop to see if the phones they had may have had a later production date (The two phones I had were ” 13 / 2012 “, and I’m just assuming this is the production batch date).
Turns out that every Futureshop and every Best Buy received 2 units when the Lumia 900 launched. I checked every Futureshop and Best Buy in Calgary, Alberta (except 1 of each in the North end of the city) and all told me they haven’t sold any since launch, and I confirmed all boxes had the ” 13/ 2012″ on the sticker at the bottom of the box. Additionally Futureshop REFUSED to sell me the Lumia 900 stating “All new phones that Best Buy and Futureshop carry are only available by going on a contract term with the provider”. I mentioned that I purchased a phone on Friday and I purchased it outright from Best Buy, they told me “that doesn’t sound right” and after pushing they changed their story to: “When it comes to Best Buy, its the stores discretion, but Futureshop isn’t allowed to sell the phones outright”. I find this very hard to believe, and I’m surprised that they make it this hard to buy a phone…
Finally after 5 hours of going to all the Best Buy’s and Futureshop’s, I finally purchased another device. The new device DOES have the purple display issue. At this point I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
On one note though: I’m just absolutely shocked that in a city of more than 1,000,000 (1 million) people, that I’m the only person that has gone to a Best Buy or a Futureshop to buy a Nokia Lumia 900 (according to the information the sales people at the stores have provided me with).
UPDATE (May 1st, 2012): I noticed today with my phone manually set to medium, that the white background of the “Outlook” app is now starting to show a purple tint (it’s whitish/purplish). It’s somewhat hard to see, and you have to be looking at the phone directly. If you tilt the phone the purple-ness disappears.
Also, here’s something interesting… Turn your phone off, or put it to sleep: Go somewhere close to a light, and use your phone’s screen to reflect the light (as if you were looking through a mirror at a light. Notice how there is a purple haze around the light in the reflection on the phone. I’m almost positive this is hardware and it has something to do with a internal coating in the screen.
UPDATE (May 2nd, 2012): I e-mailed my corporate sales rep at Rogers on Monday and asked about this issue and if Rogers is aware of it. It is now Wednesday and I have not received a reply.
UPDATE (May 7th, 2012): No word back from my Corporate rep at Rogers (I’m not surprised…), it’s now been a week. I don’t think this is because they are aware of the issue and don’t know what to say, but rather this is just typical for Rogers (but I’ll get in to my problems with them in another blog post). On the bright side of things, Nokia mentioned today they are releasing a software update soon to resolve the purple hue/tint on the Lumia 900. Let’s hope they aren’t using a software fix to hide a hardware problem!
UPDATE (May 9th, 2012): A few days ago, Nokia finally mentioned they were going to release a software update to resolve the purple hue issues. Even before that was announced I had made the finaly decision to keep the phone just because of how awesome it is. I’ll keep this post up to date with info on how this turns out, but I’ll be posted a full review soon! Stay tuned!
The other day I received a notification that one of my clients were running out of space on their SAS RAID Array which contained their Exchange 2007 mailbox data store database. While I have every plan to increase the size of this partition, I still have to temporarily fix things so we don’t run out of space. Technically, to put a temporary fix on this, I had to move the Exchange Server Data to another partition on the server which had plenty of space. Typically, this is very easy on Microsoft Small Business Server 2008. However, in this specific scenario we were getting an error when trying to run the wizard to move the data:
“You cannot use the Windows SBS Console to move the Exchange Server data. – You may have used the Exchange Server Management Console to perform advanced configuration tasks. For information about how to reconfigure move your data using the Exchange Server Management Console, see the documentation for Microsoft Exchange Server”
After receiving this error I went ahead and looked for the logs pertaining to the move wizards. The error log mentioned that configuration was altered from the default (which is acceptable since we have done some modifications to our Exchange config), and I also believe this is occurred due to both our “First Storage Group” and “Second Storage Group” already being hosted on different logical partitions. From what I have read, you cannot modify your Exchange configuration too heavily, nor have your different storage groups on different partitions for the wizard to work.
Since this happened, we have to move the Exchange data manually using the Exchange Management Console. These instructions will work for both Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008, and also Microsoft Exchange 2007 running on a standard Microsoft Windows Server (only if your not using any replication to other Exchange Servers). Please note that during this move, all move functions will require the database to be dismounted from the information store. Only Exchange 2010 (or later) supports live moving.
Instructions to move the Exchange database (First Storage Group – Mailbox Database):
Important: Always back up your server before doing heavy operations like this in case something goes wrong. To back Microsoft Exchange up, you have to have backup software that is “Exchange Aware” and can properly back it up.
1) Launch the Microsoft Exchange Management Console and locate the Database Management information – You should be able to find the Exchange Management console in your start menu. When opening it should prompt for a UAC (run as Administrator) privileges, grant it. If it does not prompt you to run as Administrator, right click on “Exchange Management Console” and select “Run as Administrator”. Once you have opened the console, expand “Server Configuration” and “Mailbox”.
Server Configuration -> Mailbox
2) Move Storage Group Path -First we need to move the “Storage Group Path” for the “First Storage Group” (which contains our Exchange Mailboxes). This will move the files that are related to logs, transaction files, etc… To do this, right click on “First Storage Group”, and select “Move Storage Group Path…”. Follow the wizard. Inside of the wizard, you will choose the new location in both the “Log files path” and “System files path”. Finally after you have specified the location, it will dismount the database and perform the move function.
Move Storage Group Path Wizard
3) Move Database Path – Now we need to move the actual database path of the “Mailbox Database”. This will actually move the Exchange mailboxes on our server to a new location. To do this, right click on “Mailbox Database” and select “Move database path…”. Follow the wizard. Inside of the wizard, you will choose the new location for the “Database file path”. Finally after you have specified the location, it will dismount the database and perform the move function.
Move Database Path Wizard
4) Move Public Folders (If desired) – If you desire, you can also move your “Public Folders” by performing the same steps for the “Second Storage Group” and the “Public Folder Database”. In my case, our public folders are very small, so I didn’t bother.
You have now moved your Exchange 2007 mailbox database.
I was out for dinner the other night at a nice restaurant in downtown Calgary. While waiting for my tenderloin steak, I decided to pull out my phone and check my Twitter, Facebook, e-mail (you know, the usuals). I noticed that my Samsung Focus (SGH-i917) picked up some WiFi networks and I accidentally tapped the option, I saw that I was picking up a wireless network with the SSID of “ShawOpen”.
I remember reading about Shaw launching a city wide wireless network in select areas as a trial. This service compliments your existing internet services you have with Shaw. While the project is currently on trial, when and if it leaves trial, it will simply use the amount of bandwidth you are already paying for with your home Shaw internet package.
More information on the Shaw Exo WiFi Trial can be found here. I believe you can associate 10 devices with your account (someone correct me if I’m wrong) and your device will automatically connect as long as your WiFi is turned on whenever you are in range. It’s a simple, fast, wireless internet connection.
Anyways, moral of this story: It was easy to connect, easy to log in (it uses your @shaw.ca e-mail address), and it was fast! And don’t forget, this lets you avoid using your cell phone data plan! I’m definitely going to be using this more often! Good job Shaw!
And remember: Whenever doing anything with confidential data (banking, private stuff, etc…), always make sure the website’s you are accessing use SSL encryption (you’ll see https in the address bar). If data is sent over a wireless connection and not encrypted it can be intercepted.
For the past 2 weeks I’ve been receiving notifications reporting that one of my clients SBS 2008 environments is about to have some Exchange certificates expire. Below is an example of the event log:
Source: MSExchangeTransport
Category: TransportService
Event ID: 12017
User (If Applicable): N/A
Computer: server.domain.local Event Description: An internal transport certificate will expire soon. Thumbprint:ZOMGZOMGZOMGZAOMGZOMGZOMGZOM, hours remaining: 46 Event Log Name: Application Event Log Type: warning Event Log Date Time: 2012-03-08 13:15:36
Now upon initial research, apparently we were supposed to just be able to run the “Fix My Network” wizard inside of the SBS Console. Running this during the warnings, and after the certificate actually expired did absolutely nothing. The wizard was unable to detect the certificate had expired. It did report something to do with issues with an SMTP connector, however everything was working, and when trying to fix that, the wizard errored out and could not complete. I also read another article that running the “Setup my internet address” my fix the issue, but however it did not.
I decided to take a look at all the certificates currently install and also in use. To view the certificates installed, go to “Start”, then “Run”, type in “mmc.exe” and hit OK. Click on “File”, then “Add/Remove Snap-in”. Inside of this window, highlight “Certificates” and move to the right (hit the button with the arrow). Another window should open, select “Computer Account”, and follow through with the wizard. Once the certificates open, expand “Personal” and “Certificates” underneath it.
In my environment I noticed that there were two certificates that were identical, only difference being expiration. I had a feeling that the proper certificate existed on the server, however for some reason it was using an older one that it should not be. Keep in mind, this specific server was migrated from another (SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 Migration to new hardware).
To confirm they were identical, I opened up a Exchange Shell (find it in the start menu, and right click and “Run As Administrator”). I typed in “Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL”. The output confirmed that the certificates were the same and performed the same function.
ONLY PERFORM THIS if exchange is using the wrong certificate and you have two certificates which are the same, only with different expiration dates. If you do not, you are experiencing another problem and these instruction either won’t help you, or make your problem worse.
I decided to switch Exchange over to the new certificate:
1) Get the thumbprint of the newer certificate, it will be provided when you run “Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL”. Make sure the services and information match the certificate that is about to expire.
2) With the Exchange Shell still open type in “Enable-ExchangeCertificate thumbprint -Services SMTP,POP,IMAP” (sub in the thumbprint where it says thumbprint).
3) It will ask you to confirm, click ok.
4) Delete the old certificate, but make sure you back it up first. Export the old expiring certificate using the Certificate view inside of mmc.exe (what we did above). Export it (with extended data) so it can easily be re-imported if any issues occur. If you do need to restore it, inside of the Certificate view in mmc.exe, simply right click, re-import, and use the “Enable-ExchangeCertificate” (shown above) to re-activate it.
Hope this helps!
Wow, what a horrible weekend it has been dealing with all these certificate expirations (both clients, and my own). Ton’s of articles on the internet, however tons don’t cover what you do if you have your own certificate authority and DON’T want to use a self-signed certificate. Also, all the tutorials on the net use the Shell, I rather use the GUI…
When it comes time to renew your certificate, you’ll be seeing these in your Event Viewer:
Source: MSExchangeTransport
Category: TransportService
Event ID: 12018
User (If Applicable): N/A
Computer: server.domain.com Event Description: The STARTTLS certificate will expire soon: subject: server.domain.com, thumbprint: ZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMG, hours remaining: 664. Run the New-ExchangeCertificate cmdlet to create a new certificate.
Source: MSExchangeTransport
Category: TransportService
Event ID: 12017
User (If Applicable): N/A
Computer: server.domain.com Event Description: An internal transport certificate will expire soon. ZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMGZOMG, hours remaining: 664 Event Log Name: Application Event Log Type: error
Anyways, first off, DO NOT use this tutorial if your running “Microsoft Small Business Server”, there is a better, easier, and more automated way to perform this on SBS (I won’t be covering that in this blog post, I will however make another one to explain the procedure). Depending on you’re environment, this may or may not be the best way or the right way to do this. In my environment, I have 1 server that acts as a Domain Controller and a Certificate authority, and a second server that is running Microsoft Exchange 2010.
You take your own risk if you perform the instruction in this blog post.
1) Start the renewal process
We need to generate a renewal request. Load up the Exchange Console, and select the “Server Configuration” on the left. It should load up your Exchange Certificates on the lower half of your screen. Look for your certificate that is about to expire. To get the details on the certificates, simply double click and it will load the info, if you’re unsure of which certificate it is, use the thumbprint provided in the Event viewer, and compare it to the Thumbprint on the “Details” tab of the certificate. Once you find it, highlight it and select “Renew Exchange Certificate…” on the action pain to the right.
Renew Exchange Certificate
2) Create renewal request Wizard
This will open the certificate renewal request wizard (as shown below):
Certificate Renewal Request Wizard
Simply choose a file name and location to save the request. It’s easiest just to save it on your desktop. After, hit “Renew”. This will generate the certificate renewal request.
3) Copy certificate request to clipboard
Locate the file you created above inside of Windows Explorer. Right click on this file and select “Open”, or “Open With”. When prompted, uncheck the “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” option, and select “Notepad” as the program to open the file with. Example below:
Open with Notepad
This will open the certificate request. Now highlight all the text and copy it to your clipboard. Example below:
Certificate request in Notepad
4) Submit certificate request to certificate authority using web interface
Now we submit the request! Log on to your certificate authority web interface. On the first screen, we will select “Request a certificate”, as shown below:
Request
Then select “advanced certificate request”, as shown below:
Advanced certificate request
And now, choose “Submit a certificate request by using a base-64 encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file.”, again example below:
Finally, we are going to populate the request. Inside of the “Saved Request:” text box, paste your request from your clipboard (which we copied to your clipboard above), then for “Certificate Template:” choose “Web Server”. Example is below:
Now select Submit! On the next page that loads, simply select “Download certificate” and save it to a location you’ll remember.
5) Install certificate on Exchange
We now have a certificate that’s ready to be installed. Go back to the Exchange console where we left off. Inside of the certificate list, you should see an item that has a status that says something about a pending request. Highlight this request, and on the Action Pane, select “Complete request”. I could be wrong on what this says as I can’t remember and did not take screenshots.
A wizard should open up, in this wizard simply point it to the new certificate (the file we just saved at the end of step 4, shown above). Follow the instructions.
6) Assign Services to Certificate
Now that the certificate is installed, we need to assign which services will use it. The new certificate should also now be in the list of certificates inside of Exchange. Highlight the new certificate, right click, and select “Assign Services to Certificate”. Example below:
Assign Services to Certificate
Once the wizard opens up, follow through and when actually prompted for the services check everything except for “Unified Messaging”. Finish the wizard.
7) Delete old certificate
Now we are almost done. Go back to the certificate list inside of Exchange and look for the old certificate that is going to expire. Highlight it, right click, and select “Remove”.
You’re Done!
Well, for some time I haven’t been able to have my Samsung Focus (SGH- I917 Windows Phone 7) automatically sync over Wi-Fi when on AC power. It should connect after 10 minutes and sync if setup properly.
When it does try to connect, Zune opens on the computer and presents this error: “Connection Error – Can’t connect to your phone. Disconnect it, restart it, then try connecting again.”. Unfortunately I have done this over 400 times over a span of 4 months each time failing.
This is an extremely convenient feature to have, especially if you have a Zune Pass and download music on both your WP7 device, and your computer. Having it sync overnight when the phone is plugged in while sleeping just rocks.
I finally decided to set aside some time to resolve the issue. Tried numerous things like reconfiguring the Wireless Sync, deleted everything off the phone, etc… with absolutely no luck.
FINALLY TO RESOLVE I just went to the sync settings for the phone and selected “Forget this phone”, then after that re-configured the sync partnership. Unfortunately it duplicated all my pictures and videos on both the computer and the phone (some stuff had 3 copies and my WP7 pic folder on my computer almost tripled in size). After this (I made sure I had everything backed up), I deleted all Music, Pictures, Videos, Zune content off the phone, and set Zune up to sync nothing, I then reconfigured my Sync’ing preferences (re-setup music, pictures, etc…). MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR WP7 PICTURE FOLDER, when I told it not to sync, it actually deleted it off the computer.
Short Instruction:
1. Backup your WP7 Picture/Video Sync folder on your computer (The folder that contains Pictures and Videos you take).
2. In Zune, Select “Forget this phone” under the phone’s sync properties.
3. Reconnect phone, create new sync partnership. If no duplicates of Pictures/Videos exist, configure wireless sync and your done.
4. If you experience duplicates of “Camera Roll” and “Saved Pictures”. Delete them off the phone and computer, sync, and restore from backup, sync, and finally configure wireless syncing.
And you’re done!
Well, I thought I’d share a recent experience with all of you…
About a month ago, one of my clients underwent a Static IP change. Their provider notified them that due to network changes, their Static IP addresses for their servers were getting updated. This isn’t odd, completely normal, and usually happens once every 3-5 years.
Here’s where things get messed up:
Shortly after the change even though SPF records, Reverse DNS, DNS, and blacklists had been checked/configured, for some reason we were having issues sending e-mail to a handful of organization. After a couple of weeks, one of the recipients got their IT department to check in to why. Turns out SORBS had the new Static IP blacklisted.
SORBS had the IP listed as a dynamic (non-static) IP. Keep in mind, my client was using a business connection from one of the largest ISPs in Canada with networks throughout all of North America.
At first, I thought no big deal, I’ll just fill the form out to de-list. Turns out there is no form, you have to register to their site. I found this extremely odd, I don’t want anyone knowing my contact information, I’m not even an employee of the company, and on top of all this, why would they need us to register?
So I registered, waited 30 minutes for a confirmation e-mail to log in, and BAM, got an SQL error when trying to log on to their site, couldn’t go any further. I needed to get this de-listed ASAP. Stuck as a guest on the site, I tried to find a way to contact them via e-mail or some other means, turns out they don’t allow you to contact them unless you are registered.
So at this point I was stuck. I contacted my client’s ISP and asked if there was anything they could do to assist. The ISP responded, and actually mentioned that SORBS regularly does this. Apperently all ISPs send out static IP lists to all Blacklists but SORBS refuses to update it unless the ISP pays a very large “exuberant” amount of money. If the ISP does not pay, they don’t update them. ISP said there was nothing they could do.
I finally decided to just e-mail “webmaster@sorbs.net” and explain the situation. The e-mail was accepted, however no response.
So here we are 5 weeks later and we are still listed and my client is complaining of 1 more organization they can’t send to. Thankfully today out of nowhere my account works on their website, and I was FINALLY able to put through the de-list request.
Why would anyone use this RBL? What a pain!
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