Offline Installer for Windows Live Essentials

I constantly find myself amazed at just how good some of the free applications included with Windows Live essentials are. I particularly like the movie maker which is easily as good as any of Mac’s offerings.

That being said, I am also constantly amazed at how annoying the online installs of some of these free programs can be – especially if you are installing the package on multiple PCs.

However, in the case of Windows Live Essentials, Ed Bott recently published a link to the offline installer on ZD Net for all to use.  Please find the link below

 Windows Live Essentials Offline

For those of you that have never used this package, I strongly encourage you to check it out. In fact, I have written all of these blog post’s on the Windows Live Writer and it is an essential tool for the maintenance of this website.

Enjoy the link folks!

Working with the Auto-Complete Cache

“Fire!!” “Earthquake!!” “Tornado!!” – all of these desperate screams for help pale in comparison to the shriek heard from end users after getting a new mail profile. As the words “Hey, my contacts are gone!!” come bellowing down the hall, many techies simply feel like packing up, retiring and heading for a more rewarding career – perhaps that of a trash collector or road sweeper. Truly, the world has come to en end if [insert_name_annoying_user_here]  has lost his contacts!

Or, maybe not. While it is true that there are few things that both irk and are more readily noticed than a missing auto-complete cache, the file itself is fairly easily managed. With a little bit of extra work, you will be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that plague IT administrators after a profile switch and you will also be able to help end users clean up or reset their cache completely.

Before we get going, however, it is worth noting that the auto-complete cache is simply that – a cache. As such, it has very little offered by Microsoft in terms of editing it and in Microsoft’s eyes is more of a temporary data repository rather than some sort of proper database. Don’t expect to get stellar support from Microsoft should this become corrupt – the official line is that all addresses should be kept in your address book or outlook contacts. As a matter of principle, I must admit that I too agree with this advice.

Nevertheless, users expect their cache to be manageable so let’s dive in and look at what can be done with this.

The cache itself is implemented in the form of a file that has the .NK2 extension and is named after the name of your outlook profile. By default, this name is likely going to be “outlook.nk2”, but be aware of other names. In Vista and Windows 7, you will find this located at:

“C:\ Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook”   

in Windows XP     

“C:\ Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook”      

In order to see this file, you will have to ensure that you have enabled the display of hidden files and folders.  (Learn how:Show Hidden Files)

So, once you have the directory open, it is likely that you will not see an auto-complete cache in that folder. Outlook only creates this after an email is sent and Outlook is closed and re-opened, so go ahead and send a test message to yourself, or whoever you see fit. This will cause an entry to be written to the .NK2 when Outlook is closed and reopened. After doing this, ensure that Outlook remains closed as having Outlook open will put a lock on this file and prevent you from renaming it.    

Now, take not of the name of the new .NK2 file. You will have to find the previous one from the old profile, move it to the new directory and rename it to the exact name of the new .NK2 file you have created. Go ahead and rename the new one to profilename.bak. Rename the old .Nk2 file to the name of the newly created one. Finally, reopen outlook and you should have all of the old auto-complete entries available.

Now, given this information, one of the easiest ways of creating a brand new .NK2 cache should the old one be corrupt, is to simply follow the procedure above and just rename the .NK2 file.

Another useful tidbit, is that individual entries in an an auto-complete cache can be deleted by simply hovering over the entry in the drop down and pressing the delete key while it is highlighted.

In Outlook 2010, Microsoft has also added a red X with which you may delete the entry by clicking on it. You can also get a brand new cache in Outlook 2010 by using the Outlook.exe /CleanAutoCompleteCache switch. Simply cut and paste this into the run box and you will end up with a brand new cache.

If you need more extensive editing capabilities of the .NK2 cache there are several free and relatively cheap editors out there that will allow the import of entries and correction in an easy to use editor.

So don’t worry about finding a pair of overalls just yet for your new career, there really are ways of dealing with the auto-complete cache.  I hope this little tutorial helps!

Cheers!

Hosting and the Cloud

Hello folks.

It really seems like an eternity since I updated this blog. I have been busy implementing some projects at work and Paul spent a fair chunk of time gallivanting around Europe and South America.  While I am sure that Paul has had a good chance brush up on his French and Spanish, I have spent a good chunk of my time brushing up on DFS logs and learning more about The Cloud.

Much has been written about the cloud and both the media and the big players in the IT industry seem to be having a virtual orgy espousing the virtues of server-less IT environments.I jumped in to this love fest at first too, but that was with great naivety – I was but a virgin in this game.

I know better now and let me tell you – don’t party in the cloud until you are sure you know what you are getting yourself into. While many of the benefits that big players like Microsoft and Google promote are true, they often fail to mention how difficult the actual logistics of moving into the cloud can be.  There are some real gotchas to watch out for. Put your party hats on boys.

Let’s take the example of a hosted exchange environment and dissect it a little. It seems like a great idea. The ability to take your email anywhere; no need for a VPN; 99.9 percent uptime and no menacing exchange limits or management to perform. All of this is true, but the question is, how do you get the data there?

Many organizations have spent years building up complex linkages in their exchange environment and to that end have enormous amounts of email behind all of that. There are public folders, contacts, resource mailboxes and a plethora of other oddities.  Quite simply, users don’t often realize how complex their environment is and will easily consent to changes to the environment without actually realizing what the change itself means. This leads to disappointment when the new environment is rolled out and a lot of headaches for IT support staff who were assured that everything was “kosher” before the transition.

Then, there is the logisitcs of actually moving data in the first place. The tools that exist for importing and exporting mail are quite labour intensive and demand that the user be pulled away from their computer. It can take literally hundreds of hours to export pst files, re-import them and then to have that data spool down again and rebuild a users cached mail file. In theory, there would seem to be many tools at one’s disposal for doing this, but at the end of the data these tools prove utterly unreliable for the large mail stores of today’s users. For instance, it is not implausible to run across mailboxes that are over 15 GBs in size today. How do you even manage getting such a mailbox into the cloud? How do you deal with exporting it. All of these operations actually require exporting mail to a .pst file. Exmerge is of little use since it breaks the files into 2Gb chunks. So, you are left with actually exporting this out of outlook and having to babysit it to ensure that it completes. Then you have to physically open the users new mailbox in outlook and import that data back in. Given average Internet speeds for small businesses, you are looking at a 4 or 5 day process just for one mailbox. The logistics are a nightmare. This definitely isn’t the no-strings-attached fun you were promised on Craigslist. 

Now, after all of that data is finally up in the cloud, what happens when this all breaks? You are completely at the mercy of some company in New York that has very little accountability to the end customer. I guarantee you that they will not feel the same sense of urgency that your own personal systems administrator feels when exchange has issues. Sure, it is more reliable – but let’s be honest. Everybody has some downtime.

Anyway, this was all a bit of a ramble, but I guess my point in all of this here is to make sure you carefully evaluate whether a hosted or int he cloud solution is really right for your business and if you do decide to take the plunge carefully audit and where possible purge the amount of data that will need to be uploaded. Then ensure that your users understand the transition plan 100 per cent and make sure that the expectations of the outcome are crystal clear. Do not promise that an environment will look identical to the in-house exchange. Just promise that there will be a way of accessing data that is needed in a timely fashion. Both your users and IT team will reap the rewards of this careful planning and management of expectations.

Thanks for the read!

Cheers….

Matt

My SBS CALS Have Disappeared

 

So here I ask, is there anything more intensely irritating than a boy dragging his nails across a dry dusty chalkboard? Probably not, but I must admit, every time I open up a licence manager on a SBS Server and look at CALS, I get that same feeling of impending rage.

Let’s just say it; SBS 2003 CALS were a total pain and completely useless.  Yes, I understand that Microsoft wanted to protect their best interests and needed to make sure that the SBS package wasn’t used inappropriately, but surely it did not warrant a system so maddening.

So, with my thoughts on this known, you can imagine how I felt when one of my client’s SBS Servers for whatever reason decided to drop its licence database.

This shouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that nobody could find any records regarding these CALS and even calling Microsoft was futile. The previous IT firm did not document anything and it was not completely clear how they even purchased the CALS in the first place.

After discussing it with Microsoft and being told that they were “escalating” the issue, I set out to see if there was a technical solution to my problem.  I poked around and found that the licence database itself is implemented in two tiny files. These are: autolicstr.cpa and licstr.cpa.

Apparently, there is an automatic backup created of the licstr.cpa which is the main licence database.  The easiest way of fixing this is to copy these two files out of the C:\windows\system32 directory, use NTbackup and back them up to a file and then use the restore wizard in SBS licence manager to recover them from the file.

If you get an error message that the CALS are no longer useable, simply write down the keys that are shown in the licence manager, re-enter them and phone Microsoft to re-validate. Naturally, you should take the time to properly document the CALS and back them up using the backup licence function in the licence manager, so that you will never have to deal with this again.

This little trick sure made my day, and I hope it helps some of you as well!

Cheers!!!!

Outlook 2007 Inbox Renamed

We’ve been a little shy on updates lately folks. It has been a busy time of year, Paul is down in South America having the time of his life, and spring is fast approaching. Still none of this excuses our lack of writing and definitely doesn’t excuse the brevity of this post.

Nonetheless, this is all I have to offer for now.

A few days ago, one of my clients called me up and said that his Outlook 2007 inbox had suddenly been renamed to image001.jpg.  I have seen a lot of strange things, but this I really had to see.

As my log me in session connected and I focussed on the tiny text on my laptop screen, there it was. image001.jpg. This was indeed bizarre. I wasn’t really sure where to begin with this. The issue, in fact, doesn’t affect the end user in any way nor does it impede the normal flow of mail. But still, it is an annoyance. 

Historically, I have had great luck with the various switches that can be used to launch Outlook. So, I started digging in a bit, and sure enough I found a switch /resetfoldernames.

I was a little worried about running some random switch that I knew very little about, but again, past experience has been really good with these Outlook commands and away I went with it.  5 seconds later and the problem is gone.

So, for thos of you that have never used an outlook switch, here is the procedure. Open the run dialog box and enter the following command.

Outlook.exe /resetfoldernames

I always like to start this with outlook closed so that it opens one new instance of the program.

If anyone knows why this happens, I would love to hear about it. Please post your comments below.

Cheers!