Month: December 2010

Fixing the Outlook Web Access web application failed to initialize error

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During the Christmas break many still wish to check their e-mails whilst enjoying their holidays.  One of my Clients who don’t use OWA are now taking the plunge and going to be checking their e-mail (great feature). With SBS 2008 (so Exchange 2007), OWA is enabled by default, so I thought there would be nothing that I needed to do, I was wrong.

After loading up OWA on the server and my laptop I received the following error:

The Outlook Web Access web application failed to initialize.
..
Exception
Exception type: Microsoft.Exchange.Clients.Owa.Core.OwaThemeManagerInitializationException

The fix I’ve worked out for this is to copy the original files in the theme directory from your installation media (x:\Setup\ServerRoles\ClientAccess\owa\version\) back into the OWA working directory.

The cause, I suspect a corrupt file, not too sure exactly and didn’t have much time to investigate seeing as it’s holiday time, but believe something had changed the theme configuration causing OWA to look elsewhere for theme files, I also have a suspicion that an update might have caused this, but can’t confirm.

Moving your SUSDB when it is running under MSDE

John 1 Comment

During my morning rounds of looking after clients’ servers, running SBS 2008. I noticed one was running out of space.  It had recently been updated to WSUS 3.0 SP2, after doing a quick hard drive space check I found that SUSDB was over five gigabytes in size. Generally this database should be around one gig.  Until I had some time to investigate I thought the best thing to do was to move it to another hard drive, easier said than done.

Just a little tip, if you are running under Windows SBS 2008 then you will need to Run as Administratorwill need to run the Management Studio as an Administrative user by right clicking and selecting “Run as Administrator”. This will allow you to connect to the Internal Database as your SBS Admin user doesn’t have permission to do so.

Once the logon screen appears, your first thought would be to simply select the Microsoft##SSEE instance seeing as that is what the internal database is called but it still won’t connect. You need to connect via named pipes. Do so by typing the following into the server name field:
\\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query
Once connected you should be able to SUSDB under the Databases list.  To move the database is quite simple, we will detach, move the database files and then re-attach the database. Best to stop the Update Services Service before continuing (via the Services Snap-In).

Detach Database DialogOnce in Management Studio, expand Databases and right click on the SUSDB database. From there click on Tasks and select ‘Detach…’ a dialog window will pop up. We will want to ensure that SQL Server drops any connections to the database to ensure a successful detachment of the database, so tick ‘Drop Connections’. Once the process is complete, minimise the Management Studio and navigate to the databases location (usually under ‘c:\wsus\SUSDB’) and move the folder to a location with more space.

Once that is done, we can re-attach the database. Maximise the Management Studio and right click on Databases and select ‘Attach…’. From here you are presented with another dialog box, click on the Add button and select the new location of the SUSDB that we just moved. Once you have selected the database simply click on Ok and SQL Server will do the rest.

Start the Update Services service and WSUS should be fine and work just as it was before the move.

Office 2010 and Windows Sysprep Adventures

John 2 Comments

For our new roll out next year, we are deploying Microsoft Office 2010 and using KMS as our licensing method. Througthe use of sysprep’s generalize command, Windows will flush its Activation Status and associated hardware ID as well as rearming the activation state to its fresh install state (grace period).

With the introduction of Office 2010 brings improved piracy protection.  On our test deployment we found that our KMS Client count for Office 2010 wasn’t increasing and therefore wouldn’t reach the required count of 5 for activation, what was going on!  After a little bit of digging and the use of the Office 2010 Software Protection VB Script (ospp.vbs under the Office14 folder) we were able to see that the five of our test machines had the same CMID, therefore KMS thought that each was the same client. After a quick look through Technet we found out the issue.  When you run an Office Product it would automatically attempt to activate via KMS. Our Office installer also had its own activate upon installation command as well.

The fix for this issue and getting the count to increase (and finally activate) was to run a re-arm utility provided under program files (or program files x86, depending on your installed flavor):OSPP with DCMID

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\ospprearm.exe

Running the utility under an elevated command prompt will then show completed successfully. If you wish to double check you can then run ospp.vbs with the /dcmid switch and find that there is now no Client Machine ID.

Once this is compelte, run your sysprep as you would and you will find that for each client that you activate from now on for your KMS will increase your count.  You will also find that if you have some clients with the same ID then they will also all activate.

I plan on having some other articles covering articles regarding Windows 7 sysprep so stay tuned.