Jared Heinrichs » Operating System

How to FIX outlook cannot log on. Verify you are connected to the network error

Jared Heinrichs — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:59:41 +0000

Are you having the “outlook cannot log on. verify you are connected to the network” error? Did you just recently have a DNS or Active Directory issue?

One of the reasons why you might get the “outlook cannot log on. verify you are connected to the network” error is when there is a setting missing in the “Microsoft Management Console”. I recently worked at a client who’s PDC went south big time. Long story short they were getting the “outlook cannot log on. verify you are connected to the network” error every time they tried setting up a new user in outlook. Also if they selected a group from the Outlook Address Book (OAB) non of the contact of the groups would display.

The item that resolved this error for me was:

In Exchange Management Console, Right Click “Organization Configuration”and select “Modify Configuration Domain Controller”… setting.

A new window will open. Browse for the proper info. Active directory will need to be working as well as some kind of name resolution (namely DNS) in order to select the domain and domain controller properly.

Once done hit OK. You will need to restart the services or restart the whole server. I restarted the services and that was all that I needed to do. Some people have had to do a full reboot of the exchange server after applying these settings.

This was done on a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 running on Windows 2008 64bit.

How to sync the time on a Windows Server

Jared Heinrichs — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:30:07 +0000

On the domain controller of the root forest , you may follow the steps to configure the Windows Time service to sync time with the authoritative time source.

Open a Command Prompt.
Type the following command to display the time difference between the local computer and a target computer, and then press ENTER: (without quotation mark) “w32tm /stripchart /computer: time.windows.com /samples:5 /dataonly”
Open UDP port 123 for outgoing traffic if needed.
Open UDP port 123 (or a different port you have selected) for incoming NTP traffic.
Type the following command to configure the PDC emulator and then press ENTER: (without quotation mark) “w32tm /config /manualpeerlist: time.windows.com /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update“

The computers that are joined to a domain are configured to synchronize from a manual time source. Please use the following procedure to configure a client computer that is currently synchronizing with a manually specified computer, to automatically synchronize time with the domain hierarchy. You may follow the steps to configure a client computer for automatic domain time synchronization

Open a Command Prompt.
Type the following command and then press ENTER: w32tm /config /syncfromflags: domhier /update
Type the following command and then press ENTER: net stop w32time
Type the following command and then press ENTER: net start w32time

You may also use Group Policy to make all the domain clients to sync time with PDC emulator in the domain. You may find the Group Policy settings used to configure W32Time in the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in in the following locations:

Configure Global Configuration Settings here: Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Windows Time Service
Configure Windows NTP Client settings here: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Windows Time Service\Time

Providers More reference: How to configure an authoritative time server in Windows Server 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042/en-us

Windows Time Service Best practices: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/517e74d7-40e9-41bd-93aa-48b610b936321033.mspx?mfr=true

How to make sure you only type in English

Jared Heinrichs — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 03:56:10 +0000

If you are having an issue with your keyboard changing languages on you might have hit “Alt + SHIFT simultaneously”. Sometimes if a key is sticky and then you hit shift or alt then it will automatically change on you. To prevent this I normally only have one language setup on my machine. Manufactures like HP and Dell by default will setup a machine with both official languages. The first thing I do is make these changes. The screenshots are all done on a Windows 7 machine but it will be similar if you are running Windows Vista.

Open Control pannel from the Start menu.

Type “language” in the search box at the top right of the screen. Click “Change keyboards and other input methods”.

Click on “Change keyboards”.

Make sure that you only have either English “Canadian” or “United States”. Remove Any “Multilingual” or “French Keyboards”. Use only one keyboard. I tend to find that this configuration works best for me.

Hit Apply and Ok. Voila. You’re done.

WSUS – Approve button greyed out FIX

Jared Heinrichs — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:28:21 +0000

This will hopefully be a short post. The most likely reason the “approved” or “Declined” button is greyed out is the server you are connected to is a down stream WSUS server. What this means is that there is a WSUS server a little higher up the food chain that is dictating what updates you get /receive.

There are a couple of things that you can do:

Open Update Services MMC – OPTIONS – Update Source and Proxy Server

This will open a window that will tell you where the updates are coming from! Now if you need to specify different updates to computers that use you can uncheck “This server is a replica of the upstream server”. Once you’ve unchecked this you should be able to have a little bit more control off the updates.

I personally would just go to the upstream WSUS server listed in the “Update Source and Proxy Server” box and make the changes there.

Answer – How to find WSUS server in unknown environment

Jared Heinrichs — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:05:50 +0000

I recently started working with a new company maintaining their network. Because the old network admin left of bad terms I was tasked with documenting the network and getting things back in align. Because I was in an unknown environment I didn’t know where the WSUS server was located. There are two main ways to find out what server is the WSUS server.

Registry – Using the regedit tool you can find this registry entry. It will tell you where it’s located – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
Group Policy – You will need to open up the “Group Policy Management” look through all the “Group Policy Objects” entries and figure out which one is responsible for WSUS. The setting is located in “Computer Configuration – Policies – Administrative Templates – Windows Components – Windows Updates”.

Hope this helps someone!

How to install Windows 8 Developer Build and a Visual Tour

Jared Heinrichs — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:07:20 +0000

First you will need to download the Windows 8 Developer Build which is around 5GB or so.

You might be tempted to try and install it in Virtual PC in Windows 7. Don’t. It won’t work and will tell you that you don’t have a 64bit processor even if you have one. Accept the license.

Click Custom.

Tell it to use as much disk space as you would like.

Sit back and enjoy a hands free install!

This is the first screen you will see. Believe it or not this is also what the new start menu looks like.

If you are on the desktop and no program are open this is how the Start Menu works

The new Explorer view.

This is the new Metro version of Internet explorer.

Desktop Version of Internet Explorer.

New Control Panel. Do I dare say it looks beautiful!?!?

New Task Manager with no Details

Task manager with details.

Locked screen. You need to swipe up with your finger or with your mouse. Once done this will take you to the Login screen you’ve seen earlier.

User Profile was not loaded correctly – domain

Jared Heinrichs — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:46:11 +0000

My problem was solved using this technique:
1. Restart your PC to release the locks on your profile.
2. Log on with another administrative account
3. Delete C:\Users\%username%
4. Delete C:\Users\TEMP
5. Delete the registry key matching your SID from
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”. Check the value “ProfileImagePath” to make
sure you pick your own profile.
6. Restart once again and then you’re done!

Hope this helps someone using domain accounts instead of local ones!

Network Adapter doesn’t show up in Windows 2003 Hyper-V Virtual machine

Jared Heinrichs — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:30:02 +0000

The most likely reason why the network adapter doesn’t show up in a Windows 2003 virtual machine is that you need to use a legacy adapter. In order to use a legacy adapter you need to:

Make sure that the virtual machine in question is turned off and is not in any hibernation state.
Once that is done you right click the Virtual machine. Remove any NIC’s that may currently be installed.
Click “Add hardware”. It should be the top most option.
You will select Legacy NIC
Apply the settings and start the virtual machine

Notice that the Legacy Network Adapter will be yellowie-orangish color and say “Legacy Network Adapter”.

How to script the VPN connection to VPN server

Jared Heinrichs — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:25:56 +0000

Most of the posts that I have seen about scripting VPN connections refers to scripting the actual connection “settings” but not the “act” of starting the VPN connection.

Scripting the VPN connection to the server requires that you have already gone in on the workstation physically setup the VPN connection. It’s important that you know the full name of the VPN. In your VPN connections area you can verify what the name of the VPN is. In my example the name of VPN is “Fake Company VPN”.

Once you have verified that you have a connection and that it actually connects you can proceed.

We are going to be using the built in command “Raddial”. If we type “rasdial /?” at the command prompt we would get this:

This command should be pretty straight forward. The only thing that might be a bit confusing is that “entryname” should be identical to what ever you called the VPN connection during it’s setup. In my case I called it “Fake Company VPN”. Because the name has spaces in it we MUST use apostrophe’s.

Open “notepad” and enter the information as such. We are going to be using the command “Rasdial” to script the connection to the server. Please fill in the information as it applies to you and the VPN connection.

Save the contents in Notepad as “vpn-connection.bat”. You’re done! You can now use this script in schedule tasks.

Here’s what the connection will look like from the command prompt view.

Using Group Policy to turn on Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) and firewall settings

Jared Heinrichs — Sat, 14 May 2011 18:21:45 +0000

**NOTE ** – There might be better ways of doing this in newer versions then 2003 Group Policy but I never found a way. This post will go over how to turn on DTC only for the domain the computer resides as well as making the proper firewall rules on the client.

First thing you want to do is create a new Group Policy Object. For simplicity sake I am just going to call it “DTC”.

Edit DTC. Go to “Computer Configuration” – “Windows Settings” – “Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)” – “Startup”.

Were’s going to create two items. One will import a few registry settings. The second one will runs some commands that will open the firewall so that DTC will only be externally exesible if the computer is on the domain.

Click “Add” button in the “startup Scripts for DTC”.

Script name is “regedit.exe” and the script parameters is “/s msdtc.reg”. Click “OK”.

You’re going to add another script so click “add” again. This time the script name is “firewall.bat”. Click “OK”.

Now we need to create the files needed. On the “Startup Properties” window click “Show files”.

In the Window that opens you will need to create two files and name them “Firewall.bat” amd “msdtc.reg”.

The contents of the firewall.bat is:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (TCP-In)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (TCP-Out)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (RPC)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (RPC-EPMAP)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (TCP-In)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (TCP-Out)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (RPC)" new enable=yes profile="domain"
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Distributed Transaction Coordinator (RPC-EPMAP)" new enable=yes profile="domain"

The Contents of “msdtc.reg” is:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC\Security]
"AccountName"="NT AUTHORITY\\NetworkService"
"DomainControllerState"=dword:00000000
"NetworkDtcAccess"=dword:00000001
"NetworkDtcAccessAdmin"=dword:00000000
"NetworkDtcAccessClients"=dword:00000001
"NetworkDtcAccessInbound"=dword:00000001
"NetworkDtcAccessOutbound"=dword:00000001
"NetworkDtcAccessTip"=dword:00000000
"NetworkDtcAccessTransactions"=dword:00000001
"XaTransactions"=dword:00000000
"name=NetworkDTCAccess"="Value=1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC\Security\XAKeyCNG]
"77f3543b-7150-40c0-84da-f1048248b689"=hex:30,02,00,00,4b,53,53,4d,02,00,01,00,\
01,00,00,00,10,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,1f,da,f8,22,ed,6f,a9,a8,e4,\
97,34,38,51,20,e2,e6,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,3b,54,f3,77,0a,00,\
00,00,1f,da,f8,22,ed,6f,a9,a8,e4,97,34,38,51,20,e2,e6,a9,42,76,f3,44,2d,df,\
5b,a0,ba,eb,63,f1,9a,09,85,13,43,e1,52,57,6e,3e,09,f7,d4,d5,6a,06,4e,dc,ef,\
38,c5,3e,3d,6f,ab,00,34,98,7f,d5,5e,9e,31,09,b1,f7,c4,f6,36,98,6f,f6,02,00,\
10,23,5c,9e,21,2a,ed,1a,21,a3,3d,82,4e,55,3f,82,5e,76,63,1c,7f,5c,8e,e8,6b,\
ba,a1,6a,25,ef,9e,e8,7b,99,fd,f4,04,c5,73,5a,cd,35,1e,30,e8,da,80,d8,93,43,\
7d,2c,97,86,0e,52,89,9e,6f,62,61,44,ef,ba,f2,07,92,96,65,81,9c,04,85,40,ff,\
66,e4,04,10,dc,16,03,82,4a,73,82,1e,bd,96,32,29,db,72,36,39,07,64,35,bb,4d,\
17,b7,a5,1f,da,f8,22,ed,6f,a9,a8,e4,97,34,38,51,20,e2,e6,06,eb,05,86,08,d5,\
52,62,cd,3f,b9,d9,74,45,59,8f,ec,e2,c3,2e,e4,37,91,4c,29,08,28,95,5d,4d,71,\
1a,8e,aa,6f,b5,6a,9d,fe,f9,43,95,d6,6c,1e,d8,a7,76,bf,6f,43,60,d5,f2,bd,99,\
96,67,6b,f5,88,bf,cc,83,44,b4,ac,f9,91,46,11,60,07,21,7a,95,8f,9e,b6,16,92,\
e3,eb,02,03,a5,fa,62,04,84,80,f7,8b,1a,36,e1,e3,6c,ef,dc,e0,c9,15,be,e4,4d,\
95,49,6f,57,a3,a8,83,73,1b,c1,63,ba,0e,7f,87,f7,9b,36,e8,a0,38,9e,c3,32,fb,\
34,a0,88,f5,4b,27,7f,6e,7d,cf,df,56,e3,bd,96,32,29,db,72,36,39,07,64,35,bb,\
4d,17,b7,a5,00,00,00,00,a8,16,2c,01,ce,58,83,d2,6e,28,9a,7a,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,5b,00,00,00,16,c4,5a,19,00,00,00,80,09,00,31,75,00,00,\
00,00,e4,e2,2f,01,e4,e2,2f,01,00,00,00,00,a8,16,2c,01,9a,70,40,36,63,7a,9b,\
8d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,5c,00,00,00,6f,c4,5a,19,00,00,00,80,\
f0,00,31,75,00,00,00,00,34,e4,2f,01,34,e4,2f,01,00,00,00,00,a8,16,2c,01,bb,\
44,ff,ff,59,83,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

Like any other Group Policy Object you must apply this object to a OU. The OU should contain the computers that will be needing these new settings. I will be including a zip file of these two files for download.