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If you ever have a need to save a windows servers file shares & settings here’s how to do that. This is handy if you happen to be transitioning to a new file server and you have a lot of shares that need to be transferred. You could always do it by hand but this way will save you a lot of time!

Open up your registry on the server and navigate to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares]

Right click on the Shares folder and choose export

You will now have a .reg file that you can copy and install on the new server and have all the file shares and security settings ready to go.

One note to remember is this only works if you setup the file shares identically on the new server. You have to keep the drive letters and folders matching the old server.

Error: The Template Persistent Cache initialization failed for Application Pool ‘DefaultAppPool’ because of the following error: Could not create a Disk Cache Sub-directory for the Application Pool. The data may have additional error codes..

If you happen to see this error pop up on your Windows Server 2003 system here’s how to fix it.

Basically, the problem is there are two user groups (IIS_WPG and NETWORK SERVICE) that don’t have permissions set on the following three folders:
%systemroot%\Help\IISHelp\Common
%systemroot%\System32\Inetsrv\ASP Compiled Templates
%systemroot%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files

%systemroot% is usually C:\windows or C:\winnt by the way!

For “%systemroot%\Help\IISHelp\Common ” give both groups; Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read permissions.

For “%systemroot%\System32\Inetsrv\ASP Compiled Templates” and “%systemroot%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files” give both groups full control.

then after that you’ll have to restart IIS.

1. Click Start, click Run, type Services.msc, and then click OK.
2. Right-click IIS Admin, and then click Restart.

That should fix that silly problem!

This is for anyone running Sharepoint on Microsoft Windows Server with MS-SQL and you are getting an error along the lines of “SQLAgent is not allowed to run”.

All you have to do is make a small registry change.  Navigate to:
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ SOFTWARE/ MICROSOFT/ MICROSOFT SQL SERVER/ SHAREPOINT/ SQLSERVERAGENT”

Look for the key “GUID” and delete it.

the SQLAgent service should now start up without problems.

I had a heck of a time figuring out this problem but after some searching this seemed to do the trick.

Cheers!

Here’s a quick tip for anyone trying to delete a Web Service Extension in IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.  As you know there are some extensions that don’t have the options of being deleted.

Here’s how to change that.

First you’ll need to download the Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit Tools from Microsoft.

You really only need to install the Metabase Explorer but feel free to do a full install as all the tools can be handy to have.

Start up the Metabase Explorer and navigate to to SERVER(local) / LM / W3SVC.  Look for the key named “WebSvcExtRestrictionList”.  On my system it as an ID of 2168 but it might be different on yours.

Double click on the “WebSvcExtRestrictionList” key and a window will open with all the extensions.

Each line’s format follows this basic format (separate by commas):
Status (0 Prohibited, 1 Allowed)
File Name
Delete Flag (0 Can’t Delete, 1 Can Delete)
Service Extension Short Name
Service Extension Display Name

Just click on the extension you want to delete and set that delete flag to 1.  Click OK and exit the Metabase Explorer.  Open up IIS Manager or at least refresh the Web Service Extensions window.  You should now be able to delete the Extension you want.

I shouldn’t have to say it but since I’ve been getting many of these fake emails lately I figured It wouldn’t hurt to post a reminder.

Watch out for phony emails asking for user account or credit card info!  The technique is called phishing.  Phishing attacks are called that because the senders are “fishing” for people’s personal information.  Common attacks target users of online banks, Paypal and eBay.  The email will claim there is a problem and your account will be closed or whatnot if you don’t correct the problem.  They nicely provide a link in the email message to the login page.  Here’s the problem.  That link, while it may seem to be a valid url to the company’s site, actually points to a fake webpage crafted to look legit.

Let me give an example that I actually received today!

quote:

---

Dear eBay member,
We at eBay are sorry to inform you that we are having problems with
The billing information of your account. We would appreciate it if you
Would visit our eBay Billing Center and fill out the proper
Information that we are needing to keep you as an eBay member. 
If you don’t comply until the June 2005, your eBay membership may be suspended.

Sign in Here https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll
As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you
Information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy
Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.

Thank you! 

---

Sure sounds and looks legit doesn’t it!  However, I’m not a moron and I know it’s fake.  Here are the 3 things that show it’s a fake.  Now these aren’t easy to spot so you have be a bit knowledgeable of these things.

1) The message was sent to an email account that isn’t in any way associated with my eBay account!  Now if you only have one email account you won’t be able to catch this flaw but for people with multiple email accounts it will be.  I know I registered my ebay account with account@this_domain.com but this message showed up in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com.

2) The to address doesn’t match.  The message arrived in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com but in the header the to address is set to some hotmail.com user.  Again, this should be a rather duh moment for people yet so many would never notice this.  Why would this message show up in my inbox but be addressed to some random hotmail user?  Probably because someone is using a spamming program that just spits out random too addresses when it sends out messages.

3) The link to the login page doesn’t go to an eBay url!  Oh, sure it looks pretty legit when you see the page but it’s actually a different website.  I won’t post the actual url/ip but suffice to say when you visit the page you are NOT anywhere close to an eBay server.

So what can you do to protect yourself?  The easiest answer is this.  Any time you get an email message from your bank, eBay, Paypal, etc that asks you to click on a link to log in because your account is going to be cancelled or whatever, DON’T CLICK THE LINK!  Instead, open up your browser, type in your banks url manual and log in.  That means clicking on the url bar at the top and typing each letter of H T T P : / / W W W . E B A Y . C O M and pressing the enter key.  Phishing relies on one simple fact.  Users are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance.  That means just clicking a link and following it blindly.

Take the time and log in securely and keep your accounts safe everyone!