Holding Off on Exchange 2007 SP3 Rollup Update 3-v2

Mark Berry May 11, 2011

Today my SBS 2008 box offered to install this optional update:  “Update Rollup 3-v2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (KB2530488)”. After some research, I’ve decided to decline this update.

Outlook Does Not Finish Send and Receive of OAB

Mark Berry March 18, 2011

This week, the Send and Receive task in Outlook 2007 SP2 and Outlook 2010 started hanging while trying to download from Exchange Server 2007 SP3 on SBS 2008. If I highlighted the stuck process, I could see that it wasn’t able to get the Offline Address Book:

Setting Up Email Connectors in SBS 2008

Mark Berry July 26, 2010

My SBS 2008 environment needs to accommodate a couple of non-standard email requirements:

• I use cloud-based email filtering, and I only want to allow incoming email from the IP addresses of those service providers.
• My PBX in a Flash machine is set up to send email through the SBS server. Rather than figure out how to do authenticated email from Linux, I just wanted to allow anonymous senders inside the local intranet. Same for my classic ASP site, installed directly on the SBS server, that sends email using ASPEmail.

Error Installing Exchange 2007 SP3 on SBS 2008

Mark Berry July 14, 2010

Today I wanted to install Exchange Service Pack 3 on my SBS 2008 box. MSKB 982423 says the only thing to worry about is Forefront, which I’m not using. I ran setup.exe as an Administrator. The Readiness checks passed fine. However within a few seconds of starting the upgrade, I got this error:

Unable to remove product with code 6574fdc2-40fc-405a-9554-22d1ce15686b. Error opening installation log file. Verify that the specified log file location exists and that you can write to it. Error code is 1622.

The only option was to click Finish and start looking for answers.

Can’t Install Exchange 2007 Management Tools on XP

Mark Berry July 10, 2010

The only supported way to import .pst files into Exchange 2007 is to use Exchange Management Tools installed on a 32-bit machine running Outlook 2003 or 2007:  Exchange Team Blog.

However if you download the SP3 version of the 32-bit Exchange Management Tools and try to install them under Windows XP SP3, you get that well-known message, “cannot find the file specified.” (Why is it that they never tell you what file was specified?)

Careful with Image-Based Backup of Exchange and Active Directory

Mark Berry May 3, 2010

Any image-based snapshot tool requires extra setup if Exchange or Active Directory is involved.

Getting Exchange 2003 to Accept Mail for a Secondary Domain

Mark Berry May 19, 2008

I had a customer some time ago who always spelled out my full company name when sending  me email. I finally registered mcbsystems.com so I could receive her emails.

Since then I've implemented Exchange 2003 (under SBS 2003), but apparently I never tested the domain alias until I was setting up Postini. It turns out that Exchange was bouncing messages sent to the domain with a “550 5.7.1 Unable to relay” message.

My situation  pretty much matches the second “class” of SMTP domain in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Setting up SMTP domains for inbound and relay e-mail in Exchange 2000 Server and in Exchange Server 2003

Howver, whereas the article suggests changing the SMTP connector to allow messages to be relayed
to this domain, I discovered another option. If I go to Recipient Policies > Default Policy > E-Mail Addresses (Policy) tab, create a policy @mcbsystems.com, and check the box to the left that causes it to auto-generate the address for new Active Directory users, relaying works. If you don't check the box for auto-generating addresses, relaying only works if it is set up in the SMTP connector. I'm not sure what auto-generation of addresses has to do with relaying, but I thought I'd better write this down before I forget it!

Exchange IMF and Custom Weight Lists

Mark Berry August 9, 2007

One of the features built in to Exchange 2003 SP2 is Intelligent Message Filtering. While this is a major step forward in blocking incoming spam, IMF does have its limitations. The limitation that I have encountered most frequently is the misclassification of some email as spam, and the inability to “whitelist” certain senders without implementing third-party workarounds.

Recently, a contributor to a Yahoo group suggested that it might be possible to use IMF’s built-in Custom Weight List (CWL) functionality to whitelist senders. The theory was that if the CWL’s BODY element has access to the entire email message, including headers, it could be used to allow emails that contain a certain “From:” string.

Today I was able to test this idea.