Category: SBS 2011

Browsing to Companyweb May Fail with HTTP Error 503 on SBS 2011 Standard after installing an Exchange 2010 update rollup

John 3 Comments

I was recently updating a client’s SBS Server and after giving it a restart I wasn’t able to browse their SharePoint 2010 site. After having a quick look at IIS I could see the SharePoint Application pool was stopped, so I started it up and after about 10 seconds, it stopped. So I went and looked in the Event Log and found the following error in the Application Event Log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles General
Event ID: 1509
Level: Warning
User: DOMAIN\spwebapp
Computer: SBSSERVER.domain.local

Description:
Windows cannot copy file C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v14\Configuration5212_100.sqm to location C:\Users\TEMP.DOMAIN\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v14\Configuration5212_100.sqm. This error may be caused by network problems or insufficient security rights.

To fix the issue, we need to fix the permissions of the folder stated in the event log error above. We can do that by opening up Windows Explorer to the following location C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v14. and then for each file in this folder identified in the matching event (Configuration5212_100.sqm in the error above), open its Properties and select the security tab. Then click Advanced and click on the Continue button to allow us to change the properties on the current window.  We then simply want to enable Inheritable permissions from this object’s parent.

This issue was caused by being a part of the Customer Experience Improvement Program which is what the SQM files are part of, for Exchange 2010 and subsequently installing an Exchange update rollup using automatic updates, in my case it was Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (KB2582113).

How to set (and change) an NTP time source in Windows Server 2008 R2 (SBS 2011 and Vanilla Server).

John 17 Comments

Recently, the clocks on my home networked PCs began drifting off sync until the difference was around 30 minutes. At first i thought that my SBS server was no longer synching with time.windows.com (the default time server for windows). After a quick look at the event log, I could see that it was syncing correctly and that the date and timezone were correct. So I began to look at how I could change the NTP server that Windows was syncing with. Unlike Windows XP, which had a tab were you could set the source and even add your own in the date and time control panel applet, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 have nothing of the sort, so how was I going to change the source. A quick look on technet led me to an article titled Windows Time Services Tools and Settings.

To query the time service about its current status open up an elevated command prompt and type in:
w32tm /query /status

This will display the following output (it will either state Source: Local CMOS Clock or time.windows.com)

After working out the souce and that it was synching without error as well as the obvious the fact the time was way off I needed to find a reliable Time service. After a bit of searching around the web I found pool.ntp.org which is the part of the home for the Network Time Protocol open source project (ntp.org). Members work together to provide a public pool of time servers for use by individuals and businesses. pool.ntp.org uses DNS round robin to make a random selection from a pool of time servers who have volunteered to be in the pool making this service highly redundant and reliable.

If you navigate to the Time Servers page on their wiki you will see a list of servers as rell as regional servers which you can also choose from.  Since I’m in Australia I narrowed it down to Oceanaia and then Australia leaving me with au.pool.ntp.org.  So basically I now had to reconfigure the Windows Time service to sync with the NTP Australian Server Pool. A quick look over the technet documentation told me the commands I needed to run which was:
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:au.pool.ntp.org

Which after being executed in an elevated command prompt will leave you with command completed successfully.  Once that is configured we need to restart the time service by either doing net stop/start w32time or via the Services Control Panel on Windows Time.

You can then query the time service again using /query and /status which will present you with the above output. As you can see the time service is now synching with the service that I specified it to. You can look around the NTP site to find a group of services which are closer to your location, but it generally doesn’t matter where you pick the NTP server from.

And there you have it, how to reconfigure the Windows Time service to look at a different time source.  As a side note before closing off the article, Microsoft don’t fully support the Windows 32 Time service for use in high accuracy environments as mentioned in this Knowledge base article. So if you need something which is highly accurate then you need to look elsewhere.