Windows AD Fix & Fine Tune Project

Last week I was assigned to a Windows AD fix & fine tune project. Basically this project is divided into 2 phases, where after I fix their current AD environment(WIndows Server 2000), I will implement 2 new domain controllers which is running Windows Server 2003 R2.

On the first day of the project,I found out that it has a total of 5 DCs in their current environment where 2 are production DCs, the rest are all failed DCs that did not decommissioned properly.

Immediately I know this is the root cause of the problem. Since the 3 failed DCs were shut down for quite some time, I proceed to remove and decommission them by using NTDSUTIL command.

Once the 3 failed DCs has been removed, the result shows that there is no more problem by running REPADMIN /SHOWREPL ,DCDIAG and NETDIAG.

Upon completion of phase 1, I proceed to implement 2 new DCs, transfer FSMO roles to the 2 new DCs as well as configured them as Global Catalog server.

Lastly I demote the 2 Windiws 2000 DCs by running DCPROMO, and the servers are demoted with gracefully without any problems.

vSeminar Series 2011 Malaysia

I just back from vSeminar series 2011 which held at One World Hotel at Bandar Utama. All I wanted to say is the quality of audience needs to be improved...phones keep ringing during the seminar. The folk sitting beside me even talk on with phone without covering his phone or mouth, he also leave his bag on the floor and when other people want to leave the room, they have to cross is bags to move over, and this folk just pretend like didn't aware.

SHAME ON YOU.

EMC 2010 Initialization Failed

There is a time when my customer opens EMC 2010, an initialization failed eror appeared: The following error occurred while attempting to connect to the specified Exchange server.

After some research, I was hinted that this problem might related to proxy issue. You can read more here.

In order to verify the proxy settings, you can enter the command in CMD:

netsh winhttp show proxy

Once the result shows that there is a proxy server on the server, you can remove it by using command:

netsh winhttp reset proxy

And the problem resolved.

Delete Failed DCs from Active Directory

My customer's AD environment ran into problems few days ago. Currently they have 4 production domain controllers, but they booted up an old domain controller which has been down for more than 2 months and causing the client to face slow login issue.

Immediately they shutdown the problematic DC and requested us to decommission the failed DC for them.

By right, running "dcpromo" on the failed DC to decommission it is the fastest and easiest way to achieve the goal, but somehow dcpromo doesn't work as expected, so I use the command "ntdsutil" to accomplish my mission.

"ntdsuitl" is a very useful and powerful command, click here to read more about it about how to use "ntdsutil" to decommission a failed DC.

Autodiscover Error: allow this website to configure server settings

Few days ago my customer told me there is an error message shows up when user open their Outlook client :  allow this website to configure server settings.

When I take a look into the Exchange server, I found the internal Autodiscover URL from one of the CAS servers has been modified.

                                             The first CAS server internal Autodiscover doesn't
                                             match with second CAS Autodiscover URL

Below is the command to reset the Autodiscover internal URL:

Set-ClientAccessServer -Idendity "server name" -AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri "https://test.abc.net/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml"


When I corrected the internal URL, user is now able to launch their Outlook without seeing this error anymore.

How To : Update Offline Address Book(OAB), and distribute to all users immediately

Due to some reason, my customer wants to update the OAB and distribute to all users immediately today. Here is it can be done:

Normally Exchange will run into maintenance mode at daily 5am(by default),during this time, Exchange will distribute the latest version of OAB to all users. User’s outlook client will automatically download the OAB generated by Exchange during next logon.

Today I’ll show you how to make a force update and distribution of OAB to user manually without waiting for Exchange to enter maintenance mode.

First,open EMC in Exchange server, under Organization pane, click the Offline Address Book tab, right-click on the Default Offline Address book and select Update.

Once it is done, open Services on CAS server. Look for a service name Microsoft Exchange File Distribution and restart the service. 

Once the service is restarted, Exchange will automatically distribute the updated OAB to all users, where users can see the changes\updated OAB without waiting till Exchange enter maintenance mode.

Outlook 2010 Autodiscover Prompt For Password

I received complain from one of my customer saying that user is getting prompt for password when the open the outlook client.

There is a box pop up for username and password,displaying "Connect to Autodiscover.abc.com"

Although he select "remember my password", the box will prompt again when he close and re-open the outlook client.

I type https:\\server\autodiscover\autodiscover.xml and make sure that it is valid, I also make sure the internal and external url of autodiscover is correct by running commandget-autodiscoverinternalurl and get-rutodiscoverexternalurl .


At the end,I found out that it is cause by the proxy settings. After adding the CAS array url into bypass proxy setting, the problem resolved.


I update the GPO and push it to all the client so that they can get rid of it.

System Engineer

I love my job :)

Indeed,I love my job title - System Engineer

I'm working in a Malaysia system intergration company. My primary focus area is in Microsoft Unified Communication solution. After all,I'm a Microsoft technologies enthusiast.

The intention of starting this blog is to record my working experience\thoughts on dynamic challenging,yet fun of IT world. Hopefully I could see my personal growth after some time when I read this again. 

Welcome to my blog and I hope you find something interesting\helpful here.