Skype click to call disables copy paste in MS Word 2007

I've seen this twice - an installation of Skype Click to Call (which I think is mostly useless anyway) keeps MS Word 2007 from copying and pasting normally.  In my most recent test, I opened a Word doc and edited the font size and font color.  I copied that text and went into a new document.  I pasted it and all formatting was lost.  I went into paste -> special on the new doc, and the only two formats I could paste in were forms of unicode text (rich text and/or HTML or others not there).

After removing Skype Click to Call, I could copy and paste normally between Word documents.

Windows could not start the DNS server service on the local computer. Error 1717: The interface is unknown.

I ran into an issue the other week where my SBS 2008 box lost power.  There's a bunch of irrelevant backstory that I won't go into.  But the next day, more than a dozen services were not started - including all the Exchange services.  In the end, I tracked it down to the DNS Server service not being started.  When I attempted to start it manually, I got "Windows could not start the DNS server service on the local computer. Error 1717: The interface is unknown."

I found two solutions.  I applied them both simultaneously, so I don't know which one worked, but I'm documenting them here:

Solution 1:

I set my group policy back to defaults as per this page:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1533833
I did this (copying the solution in case that page ever goes away):

• dcgpofix /ignoreschema
• Press OK twice and run gpupdate /force
• Reboot

Interestingly, my drive mappings group policy stayed in effect.  However, my password policy group policy settings were removed.

Solution 2:

I removed all of my event logs as per this page:

http://vittoriop77.blogspot.com/2007/10/error-1717-interface-is-unknown.html#.UDmCEsFlTB-

I'm writing this a couple weeks after the incident.  I don't remember not being able to open the event log, but I was in a panic as the issue was occurring during work hours, so I was throwing the kitchen sink at the problem.  To accomplish this task (copying the solution in case that page ever goes away), I did this:

• Stopped the event log service
• moved all files from %systemroot%\system32\winevt\logs to another location
• Started the event log service

SBS Monitoring Log Filled to Capacity Redux

In November 2011, I had a client server whose SBS Monitoring log filled to capacity.  I talked about that here.  The fix I implemented should have been a permanent resolution (or so I read).  In July 2012, I began to get the same event log errors related to this problem.  My log had filled to capacity again.  I had to follow the same procedure.  In this case, I kept these notes:

• it took 1 hour and 10 minutes to run the script
• the SBSMonitoring.LDF file grew to 28 GB

As a reminder, I followed the article listed here to fix this:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/07/14/sbs-2008-console-may-take-too-long-to-display-alerts-and-security-statuses-display-not-available-or-crash.aspx

Screen shot of the SBSMonitoring.LDF file after running the script:

Screen shot of the place where you shrink the  SBSMonitoring.LDF file:

Screen shot of the SBSMonitoring.LDF after being shrunk:

Annoying issue - but I'm documenting this for my own knowledge and for anyone else who may have this issue.

resetting admin password on a Mac

I had a client with a Mac where we did not have the admin credentials for the sole administrator on the laptop.  I was luckily able to find this option to tell the mac to set itself up from scratch by removing the file that tells the Mac it has already gone through the initial setup process so it goes through the initial setup process again on the next reboot.  That is described here:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/10/forgot-mac-password-how-to-reset-mac-password/

In case this that post is ever removed, here are the steps:

Restart the Mac holding down the Command+S keys, this will take you into Single User Mode and its Terminal interface

type:
mount -uw /

type:
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone

type:
reboot

This worked very well for me and allowed me to create a new account on the Mac and did *not* delete the existing data already on the Mac on the user whose password we did not know.

removing password change requirement on Office365

By default, Office365 forces you to change your password every three months.  Should you want to keep Office365 from forcing you to change your password every three months, these instructions will help:

Follow steps 1 through 4 here:
http://www.christiano.ch/wordpress/2012/03/28/office-365connect-to-msonline-using-powershell/

This gets you to the powershell for your account.  Now, you need to enter the command to disable the password change requirement.

The command is:

Get-MsolUser | Set-MsolUser -PasswordNeverExpires $true

It looks like this:

It doesn't give you any confirmation, but it works.

SBS 2008 - An internal transport certificate expired

On one of my SBS 2008 servers, I was getting this event log error 2 years after I built it:

EVENT # 2048076
EVENT LOG Application
EVENT TYPE Warning
OPCODE Info
SOURCE MSExchangeTransport
CATEGORY TransportService
EVENT ID 12015
COMPUTERNAME   SERVERNAME
DATE / TIME   5/19/2012 10:57:55 AM
MESSAGE An internal transport certificate expired. Thumbprint:98F05ABC27FEB37D5C156FD7E9FFBFFC0B098288

I had a 3 year UCC Exchange certificate on this server that IIS, POP, IMAP, and SMTP were using.  But for some reason, this "internal transport certificate" was using a self signed certificate.  It seems as though the solution was as simple as running "New-ExchangeCertificate" from the Exchange Shell.  I had already run this to replace my internal certificate, but here's what it looks like when you run the command, it prompts you to overwrite the SMTP certificate for internal processing (noting that the 3rd part SSL cert takes precedence for external communications).

moving autocomplete data on Outlook 2010

Good post on moving the Outlook 2010 autocomplete data from computer to computer:

http://benosullivan.co.uk/windows/how-to-copy-auto-complete-in-outlook-2010/