Archive for September, 2010
SBS 2008 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
This became available via the WSUS patch management in SBS 2008 overnight. It’s KB 2279665 in another name or Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3. The KB lists a stack of features that are resolved with this rollup
You’ll only see this in your SBS Security console however if you have already applied Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 yourself. Basically this is a rollup of all patches since Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 was released. You can download the rollup 1 manually here if you want to or just approve it for installation on your SBS 2008 console via the Security tab.
Installation for me went through without any problems. Following installation I did a server reboot as I do when I install patches, regardless if it needs it or not – that way I know for sure that the server comes up after any patches cleanly.
The only known issue so far is that if you use remote file access via OWA then it’s still broken (got broke with SP3). This will be resolved when Update Rollup 2 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 is released in the future (no idea when that is). If you use that feature then don’t install this just yet.
Tags: Patches
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How to hack your network at SMBNation in Vegas
Monday, September 27th, 2010
Great session title and normally if it was at a conference, I’d say “yeah right”. But this session has been designed and presented by Dana Epp – Security MVP form Canada. Now I won’t say I know a LOT about Dana as he keeps a lot very private, but I will say what I do know makes me have both huge respect for the man and huge “fear” at the same time. Dana has been hacking networks while most of us were out playing in tree houses. Dana did a session with me in Sydney on security in 2007 and I learned during that session just how insecure we really are… despite our best efforts. This is only one of the sessions you will want to see.
There are so many great reasons why you need to come to SMBNation… in addition to Dana’ session, you will also be able to see my session on SBSv7 or the one I’m doing for the ThirdTier preday on Hyper-V 
Tags: Conferences, Hacking, SMBNation
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HP ML 330 G6 – Random Reboots
Friday, September 24th, 2010
I’ve had a HL ML 330 G6 for quite some time now, and I use it to do a number of things all around HyperV. I’ve had a problem where it will intermittently reboot and until now I’ve not investigated it. I figured it was due to something strange I was doing vs anything else. Anyway – once I spoke to HP and talked to them about the problem they advised me of a fix to the System Programmable Logic Device (SPLD) that would correct this. I must say that it is a very rare occurrence as we’ve got a few of these on customer sites and we’ve not seen this problem on them all.
If you have this problem – check out and apply this update here. It should be noted that this update is not automatically deployed when you do a SupportPaq, nor is it part of the System ROM or iLo updates either.
Tags: HP
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Netgear GSM7328S Stack upgrade
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Onsite today, I was installing a brand new GSM7328S and the AX742 24GB Stacking module to link it with a 2 year old GSM7328S. I powered down the old switch, installed the stacking module and installed everything into the rack. Powering both switches on and they came up nicely… or so i thought. I found that none of the ports in the older GSM7328S would work. They would not even come up with a link light. The newer switch was fine and it appeared to be ok. On a hunch, I did some digging and found that Netgear have a newer firmware out available here
The very top item on the list of changes is a change to allow the older model (v1) work with the newer model (v2).
Ok – so I downloaded the new firmware and then used the web console on the older v1 to upgrade it to the newer firmware. Seemed to go through ok, but then failed to reboot cleanly. 
Out with the serial cable and into a command prompt on it and it showed some form of stack exception during the reboot. Not good. I found this other KB from Netgear that allowed me to perform the firmware upgrade again via XMODEM. The upgrade went through and I was then able to reboot the switch.
Unfortunately it didn’t work still. The switch was still in a reboot mode continually cycling through the power up phase and then crashing. I used the Netgear Switch Recovery tool to take the switch BACK to a different level of firmware. That process was wizard driven and dead simple to follow. 30 minutes later, the switch reboots and it’s still broken… slightly different issue this time though
Hmmm… last resort – called Netgear Technical Support. The courteous people there asked me a few questions, all up about 15 minutes and then agreed that I’d done all I could. They are advance shipping a replacement switch and we’ll be back in action in a few days.
For the record… this is the progress of a 9MB file uploading via XMODEM at 115k… yup – those were the days alright.
Tags: Netgear
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CIAOPs SMB Podcast
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Do you Need 2 Know? I mean really… what is it that you need to know? Robert Crane has been producing a new SMB Podcast under the brand of “Need to Know”. He’s up to his 5th edition now this week with. I did one a week or two back now on TechEd and Susan Bradley was fortunate to be Roberts first victim…err… guest Well done Robert for producing these – check them out and contact Robert direct if you feel you can contribute to these podcasts. Guest stars so far on Roberts Podcasts include, Susan Bradley, myself, Susanne Dansey, local Aussie reseller Peter Vane, and this week Mark O’Shea – legendary Microsoft Australia SMB techo guru.
Want to get Need to Know? It’s FREE.. you can download it here
Tags: Podcast
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Trend Micro Behaviour Monitoring Issues “Unauthorized changes blocked” messages
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Yesterday we noticed a couple of clients getting strange issues with Trend as per the screen below. Personally I didn’t experience them as I was already on WFBS 6.0 Service Pack 3. We found that the problem was resolved if the client was upgraded to WFBS 6.0 Service Pack 3.
Overnight, Trend in the USA have been made aware of the issues and they now have a patch available. You can find out more about it here
If you are using Worry-Free Remote Manager, you can disable the Behaviour Monitoring across your clients easily until you can either apply the patch or upgrade them to WFBS 6.0 Service Pack 3
In WFRM under Settings you can "enable/disable" this features from RM and it will propagate to the targeted Customer. You can’t do a Send to All Customers. You need to select each WFBS on-premise application and initiate the command. See the screen shorts below for more info on how to do this.
Tags: TrendMicro
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Microsoft releases public beta of SBSv7
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
You’ve been waiting for it, and now it’s here. A public preview aka beta of SBS7 the codename for the next version of SBS 2008 has been released today for public beta. You can and SHOULD download it and install it ASAP. You can find out more here Naturally do NOT install this in production environments.
Tags: SBS 2008 R2, SBS7
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Virus sets Proxy Settings
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
One of my friends reported that they had a virus on their computer. Not to worry – their antivirus software detected it and quarantined it. The problem was that after detecting it and quarantining the virus, they had problems surfing the Internet to a number of sites. Not all sites mind you, but things like their bank, www.nba.com, and even this site were all broken. Their email worked just fine, it was just some websites that were messed up. I paid a visit to check it out. Their AV package showed the following log file… ok – looks like it detected the virus and then moved it. Cool – virus gone.
To be sure I scanned the computer with MalwareBytes and it showed clean too. I then rebooted into safe mode and still had problems with accessing the web. Ok – not so cool. I spent a bit of time going over the computer. I reset the TCP IP stack using the netsh commands… nope – that didn’t fix it. I was scratching my head and explaining how it all works when I had a light bulb moment….
I checked the Proxy Settings on IE and found that yes – something had set a proxy server. See the screen below.
It was redirecting it to the localhost 127.0.0.1 on port 27811. The virus itself had modified IE and installed itself as a proxy server. Tricky huh.
![clip_image001[4]](http://www.sbsfaq.com/wp-content/uploads/clip_image0014.jpg "clip_image001[4]")
Now I checked using netstat (netstat –ano | find “:27811”) to see if there was anything listening on that port and there was nothing – that makes sense because the web surfing problem only occurred AFTER the AV package quarantined the virus and with the virus gone there would be no proxy to pass the info through.
Ok – give the virus was now gone… my advice to my friend was for him to change any secure passwords he had used in the past week or so as we don’t know when the virus/trojan got into his system. Thought I’d share this one though as I’ve not seen a virus/trojan become a proxy before.
Tags: Malware
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »
How can I remove the Internet Explorer 9 beta?
Monday, September 20th, 2010
Ok – I’ve had my play with the Internet Explorer 9 beta and whilst it seems to be great and all, my computer has had strange lockups and 100% CPU utilisation that began since I installed it. I attempted to remove Internet Explorer 9 beta but it was not present in the Programs and Features section.
To remove Internet Explorer 9 beta, you need to
- Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features
- Select the Installed Updates from the left hand pane
- You will find Windows Internet Explorer 9 on the list of installed updates.
- Select it and then select the Uninstall option.
The removal process needs a reboot but it’s all good after that. Interestingly after I removed Internet Explorer 9, my problems went away… I’ll need to reinstall it in more controlled circumstances and do more testing.
Tags: Beta Product, Internet Explorer
Posted in FAQs | 1 Comment »
Internet Explorer 9 Beta Available
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
If you’ve not heard it yet, there is a public beta for Internet Explorer 9. I’ve downloaded it onto my laptop and am testing right now. First tests show it to be faster… much faster than IE 8. It makes my website seem “prettier” when you compare them side by side to the older Internet Explorer 8. I’m sure it’s doing something to the fonts but I’ve not yet figured out what or why.
Anyway – it’s in beta, so be warned you might have problems. You need to test this out with all the normal websites and applications that you use in business. Get into it and download it from here
Tags: Beta Product, Internet Explorer
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