blog.saalmink.nl

SP1 for Exchange 2010 has a new approach for importing .pst files.
First of all make sure the group “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” has NTFS permissions on the folder which contains all the .pst files.
Second, make sure this folder has been shared. Exchange only accepts unc paths.
Third, you have to make a new role assignment to a security group.
Create a universal group called “Mailbox Import Export Access” in active directory and add the user who’s going to do the export. Next, from the Exchange Management Shell:

New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Name "Mailbox Import Export Access" -SecurityGroup "Mailbox Import Export Access" -Role "Mailbox Import Export"

All the preparations have been made.

To queue (yes queue!) the import for a user:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox p.puk -FilePath "\\FS01\data\Backup Mailbox (PST)\p.puk.pst"

You can repeat the line for other users or pipe a list of users to build a bigger queue.

The following command shows the queue and the status of all imports:

Get-MailboxImportRequest

or

get-mailboximportrequest | fl filepath,status

One drawback so far:
I haven’t been able to find a way to set the locale by default (was possible with non-SP1 by typing

-locale "nl-NL"

for Dutch users) which is really annoying since users will end up with “Inbox” instead of “Postvak In”, “Sent Items” instead of “Verzonden Items”, etc.
This can be overcome by logging in to the webmail before starting the import and set the default language from there (first question asked when logging in). But that’s still annoying.

Update 2011/03/25
I haven’t been able to test it yet but running the following command prior to the import might do the trick ….

Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration p.puk -Language "nl-NL" -DateFormat "dd-MM-yyyy" -LocalizeDefaultFolderName:$true

or for all mailboxes

get-mailbox | set-mailboxregionalconfiguration -Language nl-NL -DateFormat "dd-MM-yyyy" -LocalizeDefaultFolderName:$true

Today i needed access to a domain of servers, but one of our competitors would not provide us with the Administrator password, so i needed other ways to get in.

Petri.co.il has a nice page on that subject that consists of 2 steps:

1. change the local administrator password (so you can boot into Active Directory restore mode)
2. install a service to change the domain password

Somehow step 1 lead me to corrupt SAM/Software/system files so after restoring the original files i figured a way to skip that.

All you need is a Windows live cd or usb stick and the zipfile below. BartPE will do. Or use a commercial product like Active@ Boot Disk, which is really nice because of the fact that it’s based on a Vista kernel which supports the loading of drivers without rebooting. So you’re able to load drivers for raidcontrollers or other devices and your drives will appear directly.
Download this file and put it on a usb stick.

Now here we go:

1. Boot your Windows live environment.

2. Extract the content of the zip-file to c:\.
   You’ll have 2 directories.
   C:\RegEditPE
   C:\srvany

3. VERY IMPORTANT: make a copy of your c:\windows\system32\config now. Just copy the entire directory to some location.

4. Start C:\RegEditPE\RegEditPE.exe and after it’s done browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
   You’ll see new hives for windows installations that have been found, e.g. “SYSTEM_ON_G”.

5. Edit C:\srvany\_service.reg and replace (ctrl+h) “SYSTEM_ON_E” with the one on your system.

6. Check the line that says:

   "AppParameters"="/k net user Administrator 123456abc /domain"
   

   As you can see the password will be changed to “123456abc” but keep in mind that your domain can have complexity policies! Change to something more complex if needed!

7. Save the file.

8. Now doubleclick the file to merge it into the registry and close RegEditPE.

9. I’ve provided cmd.exe from Windows 2003 SP2 in the zipfile, but you might want to do:

   copy x:\windows\system32\cmd.exe x:\srvany\
   

   (where x is your drive with your Windows installation.

10. Reboot and wait a little. Now you can log in with your new password.

Tested on Windows 2003 SP2

If you have a printserver in your network and you want to change certain properties, e.g. print black/white instead of color, normally what you do is change the settings on the Advanced Tab - Default Settings Button. These are the settings a user inherits when first connecting to the shared printer.
But what if you want to revert these settings. You’d have to remove the printer from the userprofile and make sure the printer’s readded, in order to inherit the new default settings.

This is exactly what the following script does.
It also cleans removed/unshared printers, as it can only re-add printers that still exist.

on error resume next
Set WshNetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")

'## Enumerate all the current printers in the profile
Set oPrinters = WshNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections

For i = 0 to oPrinters.Count - 1 Step 2

'## Disconnect the printer
WshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection ""& oPrinters.Item(i+1) &"", true, true
'## Readd the same printer (if still exists)
WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection ""& oPrinters.Item(i+1) &"", true, true

Next

msgbox "Done"

You might want to comment the last line to make the script run totally silent.