Outlook prompting for credentials (username and password) after opening attachment (September / October 2017)

 Exchange Server, Microsoft  45 Responses »
Sep 292017
 

There is a new issue starting to be visible in the last couple days that I’ve noticed across 3 fully patched systems (Windows 10 running Outlook 2016 connecting to Exchange 2013).

When using Microsoft Outlook 2016 with Microsoft Exchange 2013, a password prompt becomes visible when opening an attachment in an e-mail. The attachment will open, however the prompt occurs after it’s opened, and only appears if an attachment is opened in the first place. The prompt will not appear if an attachment is never opened or highlighted (selected).

Outlook Password Prompt

When entering AD credentials, the prompt keeps re-appearing. When you hit cancel, Outlook will continue to function. You may also see the prompt shown below.

Exchange Password Prompt

After troubleshooting, I can confirm this is NOT related to any of the traditional “Outlook password prompt” issues that users normally experience due to misconfiguration, and I have a feeling this is related to either an Outlook 2016 update, or an update for Microsoft Windows 10 (and/or Microsoft Windows 7).

I’ve only found one other mention of this occurring on the internet which appeared a day ago, where multiple users are experience the same issue with Microsoft Office 365 with Microsoft Outlook 2016 with multiple operating systems (Windows 10 and Windows 7).

Microsoft Office Version: 1708 (Build 8431.2079)

As of right now I have no information on a fix, but I wanted to post this before other admins start ripping apart their Exchange servers trying to resolve this.

Please see below for a fix!

Update October 2nd, 2017: I’ve read that someone used the downgrade guide from Microsoft and downgraded their Outlook 2016 client to an earlier “Click-to-Run” 2016 version. This stopped the password prompt so it appears this issue has to do with the latest updates for Microsoft Office (Office 2016 and Office 365).

Update October 23rd, 2017: Still not fix, however Microsoft has finally acknowledged this issue. Information on their workaround can be found here. Essentially they’re recommending downgrading to a previous “Click to Run” version of Office.

Update November 3rd, 2017: Our Reader AC reported that Microsoft released a statement saying that they addressed this issue in the most recent flights (updates revisions for a line of products). I updated my Office 2016 Click-to-Run instance, and I am no longer receiving the password prompts. I will update in a few hours to confirm it stays this way!

To Update:
1) Open an Office Product (Such as word, outlook, etc…)
2) Click File
3) Click “Office Account”
4) Click “Update Options” on the right side
5) Click “Update Now” from the drop down

Update November 5th, 2017: I can confirm that the latest updates have fully resolved this issue, but create a new issue as well.

Cell/Mobile Phone Reception issues – Resolve with a Wilson Electronics weBoost Home 4G Cell Booster

 GSM, Rogers  3 Responses »
Jun 012017
 

Today I’m writing about something we all hate, issues with either limited or no cell phone reception. There’s pictures below so please scroll down and check them out!

We’ve all lived in a house or area where there’s no reception at some point in our life. In the house that I’m in right now, I’ve had no or limited reception for the past 2 years. Regularly I have missed calls (phone won’t ring, and I’ll receive a voicemail notification 2 hours later), or people will send me text messages (SMS) and I won’t receive them for hours. Sometimes if someone sends multiple SMS messages, I’ll actually even completely lose reception for 15 minute intervals (phone completely unusable).

This has been extremely frustrating as I use my phone a lot, and while I do have an office line, people tend to call your mobile when they want to get in touch ASAP. It became an even larger problem when clients started texting me for work emergencies. While I always stress to call the office, they are texting these more and more often.

Recently, to make the problem worse I switched from a Microsoft Lumia 950XL to a Samsung Galaxy S8+. When I received my new S8+, my phone wouldn’t even ring at all, while occasionally I could make an outbound call.

Update – July 28th, 2019 – After reading this post, make sure you look at the end for an update 2 years later!

For these reception issues, there are typically 4 ways to resolve them:

  1. WiFi Calling
    1. Routes calls, SMS/MMS (texting), and cell services through a traditional Wifi access point. Unfortunately Canadian carriers just recently started to implement this, also you’ll need a supported carrier branded phone. Wifi calling usually won’t work if you’re using an unlocked phone, or purchased directly from manufactorer (you’ll need to buy a phone directly from your provider).
    2. Provides easy handoffs from Wifi calling to the native cell towers.
    3. Unfortunately, if you’re in a low reception area, you’re phone will continue to scan and struggle to connect to cell towers (even though it’s sitting in standby). This will consume battery power.
    4. Easy as it requires no special hardware except a phone and carrier that supports the technology.
  2. Femtocell/microcell/picocell
    1. This is a little device that looks similar to your wireless router or wireless access point.
    2. Connects to your provider using your internet connection. The device is essentially a mini cell tower that your phone will connect to using its normal cellular technologies.
    3. These are popular in the United States with multiple carriers providing options, however my provider in Canada doesn’t sell or use these. I could be wrong but I don’t think any providers in Canada carry these.
    4. Easy as it requires only a single small box similar to your wifi router, and a carrier that supports it.
  3. Cell Amplifier / Cell Booster
    1. A device with two antennas, one indoor and one outdoor. Install outdoor antenna facing closest cell tower, install indoor antenna in your house. This boosts and amplifies the signal coming in and going out.
    2. This option is more difficult as it requires mounting an antenna either outdoors (for best reception) or inside of a window. Also cabling must be laid to the booster which must be a specified distance away from the outside antenna. This can be overwhelming and challenging for some.
    3. Most expensive option if you don’t move.
  4. Move to a new house
    1. Most expensive option
    2. Chances it may not correct, or even make your reception issue worse
    3. New neighbors might be crazy

In my scenario, I decided to purchase a Wilson Electronics – weBoost Home 4G Cell Phone Booster Kit. With my lack of experience with boosters, I decided to purchase the most cost-effective option that supported LTE and also which was a refurbished unit. I figured if it worked, I could upgrade it in the future to a better model that was brand new and a model higher.

Please see the links below for information:

https://wilsonamplifierscanada.ca/ – Canada Online Store

https://www.weboost.ca/ – Manufacturer website with information on products

The model I purchased:

Refurbished Part#: 470101R

https://wilsonamplifierscanada.ca/weboost-home-4g-cell-phone-booster-kit-refurbished-470101r/

New Part#: 470101F

https://wilsonamplifierscanada.ca/weboost-home-4g-cell-phone-signal-booster-470101/

weBoost Home 4G Product Page

https://www.weboost.com/products/connect-home-4g (United States Web Site)

https://www.weboost.ca/products/connect-home-4g (Canada Web Site)

Well, after a few weeks the booster finally showed up! Everything was packed nicely, and I was pleasantly surprised about the quality of the materials (antennas, cables) and the unit itself. With my specific unit being a refurbished model, it looked great and you wouldn’t have been able to even notice.

The unit comes with mounting supplies for different mounting options. I could either mount it on a pole (such as the plumbing exhaust port on the roof), against the side of the house, or use the neat window mounting option for window placement (neat little window mount that uses suction cups to affix).

I already was aware of the location of two towers in my area and had previously used cell surveying utilities to find areas where reception was available. If you purchase a cell booster, you can either follow the instructions for finding the best placement with cell service, or you can use apps on your phone to find the best placement.

Here’s some pictures from unboxing and testing. Please click on the image to see a larger version of the image:

weBoost Home 4G 470101

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Kit

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Unboxed

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Refurbished

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Outside Antenna Window Mount

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Outside Antenna mounted on Window

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Inside Antenna

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Inside Antenna

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Turned on

weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Turned on with full Green LED lights (operational)

And BAM! That was it, literally on the first test it worked great. Full bars in the basement with my main carrier! I tried a few other locations, and found at an alternative location, my other cell provider (I have 2 phones, with two providers), started to function as well!

See below for reception before and after:

As you can see there was a vast improvement! I tested it with phone calls, texts, MMS messages, and data, and it all worked fantastic! All lights on the booster were green (orange and/or red lights mean adjustments are needed).

Now since testing was complete, I decided to install it to make it look neat and tidy and hide all the wires.

I decided to leave it using the window mount since it was working so well (this was to avoid having to get on the roof, or drill in to the house). Underneath the window I have a cool-air intake so I was able to fish the antenna wire through the ventilation duct down to the basement. I was able to make everything look neat and tidy.

Below pics are final install:

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Inside Antenna

Installed weBoost Home 4G 470101 Cell Booster Inside Antenna

The entire process was extremely easy and I’m very happy with the result. I’d highly recommend this to anyone with reception issues. This should be able to help as long as there is faint reception. Please note, if you’re in an area with absolutely no reception, then a booster will not function as there is nothing to boost.

You’ll probably need two people, both for testing the signal and adjusting the antenna, as well as fishing cable through your house. Most of the time required for my install was associated with running the wiring.

For testing signal strength, I used the “LTE Discovery” app on Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.simplyadvanced.ltediscovery)

Update – August 22nd 2018 – I moved to an outdoor roof mount and the blog post can be found here: https://www.stephenwagner.com/2018/08/19/roof-mounted-antenna-wilson-weboost-home-4g-cell-booster-project/

Update – July 28th, 2019 – So here I am two years later. I live and swear by this signal booster. Since the original post, new towers have been erected in the area, however the coverage is still minimal and non-existant in the house. The roof mount (as discussed in the update above), as well as the signal booster provides me 100% full reception. The only issue I had is the power adapter (transformer) fried one day during a lightning storm. Replacing the power adapter resolved the issue and was an easy fix. For the 2 days I waited for the power adapter, I had no reception.

vSphere ESXi 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 – Unable to take quiesced snapshot

 ESXi, VMware, vSphere, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019  7 Responses »
Feb 182017
 
Windows Server Volume Shadow Copy Volumes Snapshot Screenshot

On VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0, a condition exists where one is unable to take a quiesced snapshot. This is an issue that effects quite a few people and numerous forum threads can be found on the internet by those searching for the solution.

This issues can occur both when taking manual snapshots of virtual machines when one chooses “Quiesce guest filesystem”, or when using snapshot based backup applications such as vSphere Data Protection (vSphere vDP), Veeam, or other applications that utilize quiesced snapshots.

The Issue

I experienced this problem on one of my test VMs (Windows Server 2012 R2), however I believe it can occur on newer versions of Windows Server as well, including Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019.

When this issue occurs, the snapshot will fail and the following errors will be present:

An error occurred while taking a snapshot: Failed to quiesce the virtual machine.
An error occurred while saving the snapshot: Failed to quiesce the virtual machine.

Performing standard troubleshooting, I restarted the VM, checked for VSS provider errors, and confirmed that the Windows Services involved with snapshots were in their correct state and configuration. Unfortunately this had no effect, and everything was configured the way it should be.

I also tried to re-install VMWare tools, which had no effect.

PLEASE NOTE: If you experience this issue, you should confirm the services are in their correct state and configuration, as outlined in VMware KB: 1007696. Source: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1007696

The Fix

In the days leading up to the failure when things were running properly, I did notice that the quiesced snapshots for that VM were taking a long time process, but were still functioning correctly before the failure.

This morning during troubleshooting, I went ahead and deleted all the Windows Volume Shadow Copies (VSS Snapshots) which are internal and inside of the Virtual Machine itself. These are the shadow copies that the Windows guest operating system takes on it’s own filesystem (completely unrelated to VMware).

To my surprise after doing this, not only was I able to create a quiesced snapshot, but the snapshot processed almost instantly (200x faster than previously when it was functioning).

If you’re comfortable deleting all your snapshots, it may also be a good idea to fully disable and then re-enable the VSS Snapshots on the volume to make sure they are completely deleted and reset.

I’m assuming this was causing a high load for the VMware snapshot to process and a timeout was being hit on snapshot creation which caused the issue. While Windows volume shadow copies are unrelated to VMware snapshots, they both utilize the same VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) system inside of windows to function and process. One must also keep in mind that the Windows volume shadow copies will of course be part of a VMware snapshot since they are stored inside of the VMDK (the virtual disk) file.

PLEASE NOTE: Deleting your Windows Volume Shadow copies will delete your Windows volume snapshots inside of the virtual machine. You will lose the ability to restore files and folders from previous volume shadow copy snapshots. Be aware of what this means and what you are doing before attempting this fix.

HPE MSA 2040 – The switch from linear disk groups, to virtual disk groups…

 ESXi, HP, HPE, iSCSI, Storage, VMware, vSphere  27 Responses »
Feb 142017
 

Years ago, HPE released the GL200 firmware for their HPE MSA 2040 SAN that allowed users to provision and use virtual disk groups (and virtual volumes). This firmware came with a whole bunch of features such as Read Cache, performance tiering, thin provisioning of virtual disk group based volumes, and being able to allocate and commission new virtual disk groups as required.

(Please Note: On virtual disk groups, you cannot add a single disk to an already created disk group, you must either create another disk group (best practice to create with the same number of disks, same RAID type, and same disk type), or migrate data, delete and re-create the disk group.)

The biggest thing with virtual storage, was the fact that volumes created on virtual disk groups, could span across multiple disk groups and provide access to different types of data, over different disks that offered different performance capabilities. Essentially, via an automated process internal to the MSA 2040, the SAN would place highly used data (hot data) on faster media such as SSD based disk groups, and place regularly/seldom used data (cold data) on slower types of media such as Enterprise SAS disks, or archival MDL SAS disks.

(Please Note: To use the performance tier either requires the purchase of a performance tiering license, or is bundled if you purchase an HPE MSA 2042 which additionally comes with SSD drives for use with “Read Cache” or “Performance tier.)

When the firmware was first released, I had no impulse to try it out since I have 24 x 900GB SAS disks (only one type of storage), and of course everything was running great, so why change it? With that being said, I’ve wanted and planned to one day kill off my linear storage groups, and implement the virtual disk groups. The key reason for me being thin provisioning (the MSA 2040 supports the “DELETE” VAAI function), and virtual based snapshots (in my environment, I require over-commitment of the volume). As a side-note, as of ESXi 6.5, ESXi now regularly unmaps unused blocks when using the VMFS-6 filesystem (if left enabled), which is great for SANs using thin provision that support the “DELETE” VAAI function.

My environment consisted of 2 linear disk groups, 12 disks in RAID5 owned by controller A, and 12 disks in RAID5 owned by controller B (24 disks total). Two weekends ago, I went ahead and migrated all my VMs to the other datastore (on the other volume), deleted the linear disk group, created a virtual disk group, and then migrated all the VMs back, deleted my second linear volume, and created a virtual disk group.

Overall the process was very easy and fast. No downtime is required for this operation if you’re licensed for Storage vMotion in your vSphere environment.

During testing, I’ve noticed absolutely no performance loss using virtual vs linear, except for some functions that utilize the VAAI storage providers which of course run faster on the virtual disk groups since it’s being offloaded to the SAN. This was a major concern for me as block linear based storage is accessed more directly, then virtual disk groups which add an extra level of software involvement between the controllers and disks (block based access vs file based access for the iSCSI targets being provided by the controllers).

Unfortunately since I have no SSDs and no extra room for disks, I won’t be able to try the performance tiering, but I’m looking forward to it in the future.

I highly recommend implementing virtual disk groups on your HPE MSA 2040 SAN!

vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 and VMFS 6 – Change storage reclaim priority from low to medium or high

 ESXi, iSCSI, Storage, VMware, vSphere  1 Response »
Feb 082017
 

When running vSphere 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0 (or later) and utilizing a VMFS6 datastore, we now have access to automatic LUN reclaim (this unmaps unused blocks on your LUN), which automatically unmaps unused storage on your LUNs. This is very handy for thin provisioned storage.

Essentially when you unmap blocks, it “tells” the storage (SAN) that unused (deleted or moved data) blocks aren’t being used anymore and to unmap them, which decreases the allocated size on the storage layer and frees up storage space. Your storage LUN must support VAAI and the “Delete” function.

Now taking this a step further, most of you have noticed that storage reclaim in the vSphere client has two settings for priority in the web client; none, or low.

For those of you who feel daring or want to spice life up a bit, you can manually increase the priority of the automated space reclamation through the esxcli command. While I can’t recommend this (obviously VMware chose to hide these options due to performance considerations), you can follow these instructions to change the priority higher.

Manually Configure Storage Reclaim (UNMAP) Priority

To view the current settings:

esxcli storage vmfs reclaim config get --volume-label=DATASTORENAME

To set ESXi reclaim/unmap priority to medium:

esxcli storage vmfs reclaim config set --volume-label=DATASTORENAME --reclaim-priority=medium

To set ESXi reclaim/unmap priority to high:

esxcli storage vmfs reclaim config set --volume-label=DATASTORENAME --reclaim-priority=high

You can confirm these settings took effect by running the first “get” command to view the settings, or view the datastore in the storage section of the vSphere client. While the vSphere client will reflect the higher priority setting, if you change it lower and then want to change it back higher, you’ll need to use the esxcli command to bring it up to a higher priority again.

Happy Virtualizing! Leave a comment!

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