Lync shows ‘The address book is preparing to synchronize. Search result might not be current.’

Error

When user try to search one Lync user from Lync client user gets a message that ‘The address book is preparing to synchronize. Search result might not be current.’

Solution

1. From the client system, logoff from Lync client and close it.
2. Open registry editor [Use regedit] .
3. From Registry Editor browse through and go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator’
   
4. Create a DWORD value by name ‘GalDownloadInitialDelay’ with value ‘0’
5. Go to ‘%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Communicator’ and open the folder by user’s sip-address.
6. Delete ‘GalContacts.db.idx’ and ‘GalContacts.db’
   
7. Start Lync client and wait for some time the error message should be gone.

Update-CsAddressBook fails with below Error="Retrieving the COM ….

 

Description

Update-CsAddressBook fails with below error.

Update-CsAddressBook : Error="Retrieving the COM class factory for remote component with CLSID {2766B7D8-C4FA-4617-9718 -31198883538A} from machine 10.33.243.20 failed due to the following error: 80070005.", Possible causes="Make sure that the Lync Server Front-End service is correctly installed and is running on the computer: "10.33.243.20"."
At line:1 char:21
+ Update-CsAddressBook <<<<
+ CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Update-CsAddressBook], DcomException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DCOM_TYPE_CREATION,Microsoft.Rtc.Management.AddressBook.Cmdlet.UpdateAddressBookCmdlet

Solution

1. Add the ‘RTCUniversalServerAdmins into local admin group from where the command fails.
2. Log off and login and run the command again. It should work

‘Unable to connect to the remote server’ error when try to open SQL reporting link

 

You may get an error while configuring the reporting service and opening the reporting service URL stating that ‘Unable to connect to the remote server’. This error normally visible when you change the default reporting DB name or reporting URL.

Solution

From the SQL server where you have reporting DBs configured,

1. Go to the ReportServer folder [By default its C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer]

2. Locate the file ‘rSreportServer.config’
   
3. Open ‘rSreportServer.config’ in notepad and search for ‘SecureConnectionLevel’ and set the value to “0”
   
4. Save the file and close it.
5. Now try opening the URL it will be opening without any issue.

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the SQL Server Reporting Services (Sql Instance name) service to connect.

 

Error

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the SQL Server Reporting Services (SQLDB04) service to connect.

Reason

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER) service to connect.

Solution

To solve this issue you have add registry key with higher value than 30000 milliseconds.

Here are the steps to do so,

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Browse through the registry and then click the following registry sub key,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

3. Right-click on Control, point to New, and then click on DWORD Value.

4. In the New Value #1 box, type ServicesPipeTimeout, and then press ENTER.

5. Right-click ServicesPipeTimeout, and then click Modify.

6.  Click Decimal, type the number of milliseconds that you want to wait until the service times out, and then click OK.

In this example its 60 seconds and for the same you
For example, to wait 60 seconds [60000 milliseconds] 

Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer. Once you are rebooted you can see the service is getting started or at least the value mentioned in the error is different. 

How to check SRV records by using ‘nslookup’

Even though the nslookup is very familiar to lot people its a so confusing tool to always Yesterday I had spent lot of time to see whether the srv record which i have created for Lync 2010 is correct or not.

Oops! I didn't mention why I wanted to verify from the client side, I did setup lync 2010 for my client but auto-login for the client was not working. When setup the client to use the server name manually it worked. You all know that, when client starts it always search for _sipinternaltls SRV records its configured to auto-login.

Lets come back to the point how we can check SRV records from nslookup, here is the steps.

1. Open cmd and type nslookup and press enter key
2. Inside nalookup type ‘set type=all’ and press enter.
   
3. Type ‘_sipinternal._tcp.domainname.com’ and press enter
   
4. You will be able to see the SRV record details of _sipinternaltls record. The same way can be followed for any other records like _ladp.

SQL Express Edition Backup by SQLCMD fails with error ‘Named Pipes Provider: Could not open’

Issue

Today I came across a situation that SQL backup by using script with SQLCMD fails.
Below is the error I got,

HResult 0x2, Level 16, State 1
Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [2].
Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 10.0 : A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online..
Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 10.0 : Login timeout expired.

Why this happens?

Found that it happens when you install SQL Express Edition with a custom Instance Name.

Solution

Editing the properties of Named Pipes will fix this issue, below simple steps will do the tricks

1. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager and make sure that ‘Named Pipes’ is enabled from the protocols for your instance. Right click on Named Pipes and go to properties.
   
2. By default Pipe Name is '\\.\pipe\MSSQL$TOOLS\sql\query' and change the same to '\\.\pipe\sql\query' and click on Apply.
   Note that its will prompt you to restart the service please restart the service to take affect.
3. Once service is restarted then try the script, it will work

Install Exchange server 2013 Preview

Here is the step by step instructions to install Exchange server 2013 preview version on the LAB. In this scenario I am installing Exch 2013 on Windows server 2008 R2 system.
Preparation Tasks
1. Log the server where you are going install Exchange 2013. In this example server version is Windows 2008 R2 SP2
2. Open powershell and type ‘import-module servermanager.
Then enter ‘Add-windowsFeature rsat-adds’ please refer the below screenshot.


Note that a restart of the server is required. Please restart the server.
3. Log on to the server and open PowerShell
In PowerShell type ‘Import-module servermanager’ and hit enter button
4. Enter below into power shell and press inter
‘Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation’

Make sure you have a success ExitCode

5. Install below pre-requisites,
· Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 RC
· Windows Management Framework 3.0
· Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0, Core Runtime 64-bit
· Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack 64 bit
· Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack SP1 64 bit
· Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB974405 (Windows Identity Foundation)
· Knowledge Base article KB2619234 (Enable the Association Cookie/GUID that is used by RPC over HTTP to also be used at the RPC layer in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2)
· Knowledge Base article KB2533623 (Insecure library loading could allow remote code execution)

6. Uninstall Visual C++ 11 Beta
 Exchange Server 2013 Preview isn't compatible with Microsoft Visual C++ 11 Beta Redistributable (x64) 11.0.050531. Please uninstall it before you install Exchange 2013 Preview.
Uninstall Microsoft Visual C++ 11 Beta using "programs and feafures"
Prepare AD for Exchange 2013

1.       Logon to the server and open command prompt

2.       From command prompt locate the installation files and enter ‘setup /prepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms’ and hit on enter

3.       Enter ‘setup /p /on:Pralab /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms’ for preparing domain

Note that Setup /PrepareAD will do both ‘preparing Schema and preparing domain’

Install Exchange
1. Locate installation file and double click on Setup.exe
2. If your system is not connected to internet then select ‘Don’t Check for update right now’ and click on Next.

3. Setup will copy the files and you can see the status through status bar. Once the copy is completed [100%] click on next.

4.Click next.
Note that you have some option/links to websites where you have more information about the deployment etc, click on the links if you like

5. Select I accept and click on next

6. Choose your whether you want to participate in error reporting or not and click on next.

7. Click next

8.Select ‘Mailbox Role’ and ‘Client Access’ role and click on Next

Note; As Exch 2010 SP1 you have an option for installing ‘windows server role and features’ by selecting the check box.
9.Choose the location where you want to install Exchange and click on Next

10.Click next. By default the ‘No’ is selected for disabling malware scanning,i prefer to select ‘no’ only

11.Click next.

12.Click next.

13.Next

14.You can see the progress by looking at the progress bar. It will take some time to complete.

15.Once the installation is done then click on ‘Complete’

16. Reboot the server and enjoy using Exchange 2013

Backup SQL Database to Share

 

For backing the SQL database to share you should make sure that below points are correct.

1. The service account should have access to share where you are going keep the backup file.

2. The account which you are using should have permission to backup the DB.

If above conditions are met then below query can be used,

USE VaultStore01
GO
BACKUP DATABASE VaultStore01
To Disk = '\\Server01\\SQLBackup\VaultStore01.bak' WITH FORMAT, INIT;
GO

Note;- in above example ‘VaultStore01’ is the name of Database and ‘\\Server01\\SQLBackup\’ is the share where backup file is kept. You should use WITH FORMAT, INIT otherwise the file will append and that create free space issues.

How to mount a vhd as a drive

If you want to open a vhd file and the content then there is builtin option available from Windows 7 or Windows 2008r2

1. Run command prompt as Administrator
2. From command prompt type ‘Diskpart’ and press Enter
3. Under diskpart type  select vdisk file="c:\winr2.vhd"
   
   Note- in this example the vhd file name is winr2.vhd and in your case you have to choose correct file name and path
4. type ‘attach vdisk’
   
5. Open windows explorer and see new drive is added

Exchange 2010–Deleted mailboxes are not able to connect

Its been found that there is a situation when an Exchange Administrator deletes mailboxes from Exchange 2010 and later when try connect from EMC its not able find the AD user to get it connected.

In this scenario please follow below steps for connecting it. In this scenario I was deleting a mailbox going by the name ‘Bad User’.

1. Login to server and open ADSIEDIT.
2. Locate the user from ADSIEDIT tool and go to properties of user.
3. Select the attribute ‘msExchRecipientTypeDetails’ and click on edit.
   
4. Click on ‘Clear’ then on OK
   
5. Make sure that the value changed to <not set> and click on OK
   
6. Go to EMC and locate the deleted user.
   
7. Right click and select connect
   
8. Click on Next
   
9. Click on Brows.. now you will be finding the user
   
10. Fill ‘Alias’ and click on Next
    
11. Click on Connect
    
12. Click on Finish