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Network File Shares: Folder or File In Use

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Running a Windows Server 2008 R2-based file server. The server has several network shares for each department, which we map as network drives during login using VBS according to AD security group membership. Might not be the best solution, but it works.

Our legal team uses their respective network share (in our company known as the I drive) quite extensively. Each client's documents are stored in their own folder ("Smith, John") for example, and each client folder has a standard structure. Again, not the best solution (mostly because sorting thru a massive list of folders in Windows Explorer is time-consuming), but it works.

On a regular schedule, a special department in the legal team goes through the I drive and takes folders for clients whose cases we have closed or cancelled, and moves them to a different place on the I drive. I'm not sure who thought-up this process, but maybe it helps them with keeping the number of folders they have to sort through each day to a minimum.

Personally, I think the whole structure of the share, the process, and Windows Explorer itself is a horribly inefficient combination, but I have yet to come up with anything better.

TL;DR

The problem occurs when this special department goes to move closed/cancelled client folders, and someone else is in the file. The get the Folder In Use error (attached).

As you can hopefully see, the dialog box is rather minimal. It does not say specifically which file inside the folder is locked, or who has it locked. It also does not give any way to notify the user you'd like access to that file (similar to how Office functions).

Because of this, the only recourse, after sending an email to the whole legal team and waiting a few minutes, hoping someone realizes they were in that folder and closes it, or--as a last resort--they contact IT Support for help. We then have to log onto the file server, open Share and Storage Management, click on Manage Open Files, and force kick.

There has to be a a better way!!!

I wish the Folder In Use error would display who has the file/folder locked, and that I could set permissions to allow certain people (namely, this special department) the ability to kick users out of locked files.

I know we're not the only ones using file servers in Server 2008. Does anyone else have suggestions??

Thanks in advance!


Upgrade from NT 4 to Win 2008r2.... I know its from scratch.....

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So I began a position at a new company... As I entered I am given the exciting task of getting a windows 2008r2 server domain up and running to replace a NT4 setup... Which is a decent task but there are some things tossed into the mix that make me a bit nervous not because of difficulty but because my experience with it is limited...

Currently we have a Linux DNS server that touches the outside world, a Linux firewall, a NT 4 DC, and a couple SQL Servers and whatever other servers and workstations..... Now I will be switching out the NT4 for the 2008R2 and I am not sure how to configure the settings to run AD and DNS on my server and have it function properly with the Linux CentOS DNS.... Along with this I am having to thumb through all the errors and craziness in the 2008r2 that the guy before me left a mess.... I am considering just removing and reinstalling the roles so I can configure them and know what all my parameters are it is overwhelming to try and figure out his configuration... just the AD service alone has like 26 best practice errors... most are DNS related but still a mess...

Can someone point me in the right direction or suggest some resources that will help this process?


Windows Server 2003 cannot lookup DNS or ping Internet IP's

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Hi,


We have a Windows 2003 server that suddenly stopped being able to access the internet yesterday.

It can ping local RFC1918 addresses in different subnets OK.

We can ping the local gateway

It cannot ping anything on the internet via IP or DNS name.

A traceroute fails at the first hop.

Route print shows the correct default route.

Any ideas?

Shadowing a terminal session fails on a single user

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Hey Everyone,

I'm having the strangest issue when I attempt to shadow a specific user on my terminal server. Before I go on though, let it be noted that shadowing any other user is perfectly fine, and I have scoured the googles with limited success for this particular error. All security settings are good, no recent changes to the server have happened, and I have never attempted to remote control this particular user before, so I don't know if it's ever worked with him. He uses a WindowsEmbedded ThinClient with dual monitors (dual monitors has not been a problem for remote control previously, however this is the only thin client with dual monitors in the environment).

Basically, when I try to remote control via Task Manager, I get the error "Session (ID #) remote control failed" - very clandestine windows...as always.

Poking further, when I try to "shadow #" from an elevated cmd prompt, I get

"Remote control failed. Error code 317
Error [317]:The system cannot find message text for message number 0x13d in the
message file for System."

Even more clandestine error messages. Go windows go!

I checked the WMI stats for Remote Desktop Services on the server to ensure that all the GPO inheritance mumbo jumbo was in order; everything is set to inherit from the server, which is set to "Interact and Require no approval" (a 2 in the field).

At this point, my best guesses are:

A) The ThinClient/Dual monitor setup is somehow messing with the RDP session's remote control capabilities

B) Somewhere along the line, for some unknown reason, GPO is not delegating properly to this user account only (I've seen weirder @#*% happen)

C) Pixies :(

Any thoughts? They would be greatly appreciated!

How Much Can Windows Server 2012 Comfortably Handle?

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We purchased a Dell T420 server with Windows Server 2012 installed. We also got a switch and a hardware Fortinet firewall. These machines are to be part of a new network we are constructing. We presently have a wireless router which is the Internet access machine and our computers connect directly to it and then the Web. Once the new network is established, the wireless router will change to a wireless access point for the new network. By the way, we are changing ISPs at the same time.

I was wondering what machine should handle the DHCP duties on the new network since according to research the ISP router, the wireless router, the firewall, the (managed) switch, and the server can all do the job. I asked around and got the answer that since I would have Active Directory on the server - it's to be a file server - that it should handle the internal DHCP duties and one range of addresses with the ISP router being a second DHCP server using a different range of addresses which it will assign to the firewall. However, it seems that since the Server 2012 is the first server on the network it needs to be the DNS server as well. Can one machine actually handle being the DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, and a file server all at the same time?

The idea for the new network setup is to have the server, wireless router, and other computers plug into the switch which is to be plugged into the firewall which is to be plugged into the ISP router. Can the Server 2012 machine actually do this or do I need to do it another way?

Thank you for any assistance you can render.

Demote a DC with certificate authority.

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I have a Domain Controller on my network that I want to demote to a member server. I've prepared the server for demotion except for a Certificate Authority installed there. I've never manually created any certificates, it was only installed in order to trouble shoot a problem with Trend Micro Office Scan plugins and IIS. Can I just backup the CA and registry configuration, backup the server, uninstall the CA, Demote the DC, rejoin the domain as a member server, reinstall CA services, then restore my CA and configuration backups?

Macs having issue connecting to Windows 2008 r2 server share files?

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We have several MACs that are having issues connecting to smb shares on our windows 2008r2 servers. The users are complaining about slow file download/upload speeds as well as it taking forever to simply open a folder. I have checked both servers and they both seem fine none of our windows users have reported any speed issues so I'm starting to think it's not the servers but maybe something going on with the macs. I have a mac mini that I use to configure ipads with and it has no issue with connecting to these shares quickly. They are working with larger files and can have multiple connections to the share open at once. They are running on os 10.4. Any help would be great as I am not that experienced in trouble shooting macs network issues (smb, afp etc..).

Computers Losing Connection to Domain

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Hello, We have been having this issue for quite sometime and was hoping maybe someone could give me some insight on this issue. Every once in awhile one of our computers seems to lose connectivity. Meaning it can't access shares(shared folders or printers) or any network location. The only way I can fix this is to unjoin and rejoin the domain. I know this may not be the best way, but the only way I have found around the issue. Checking event logs on the pc's doesn't seem to show anything related to this.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated.


Process Priority in Windows Server 2008 R2

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Hey Everyone,

I know this is going to sound like a really bad idea, but I need to be able to spawn processes in a real-time priority on our production server; according to our PoS software vendor, the program requires a real-time affinity on 64bit servers. I can't for the life of me fathom why they would want to do this, considering the horrific problems a real-time process could cause to the production environment should something go wrong, but this is the last "piece of the puzzle" for our vendor; basically if this doesn't fix the major latency issues we are having with the software, they'll finally believe it's not us.

Still think it's shady business, but I'm out of options. The thing is...

I've already given "Everyone" and "Users" the rights on our machine to elevate process priorities

The software's method of invoking new processes above normal priority relies on a file with a specific name inside their "program" folder - this is in place

GPO has been edited on the domain level to allow this as well

Unfortunately, I only get processes spawned as "High Priority". Further, it won't let me manually push anything to real time.

What am I missing that will allow me to run real-time processes on my server?

Thanks in advance :)

Windows Terminal Server 2008 R2 Printer Redirect

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I have a user whodoes our billing. She uses Juris and when going to print the bills it takes just under 8 minutes to open, locking up her session. It then populates over 100 printers, Local printer, network printers, redirected printers etc... We have 5 printers on the TS but she is pulling these printers from somehwere.

Via GPO I enabled the "Do not allow client printer redirection" hoping it would stop the populating of printers but it hasn't.

Any suggestions?

VDI deployment for Microsoft 2012 for a newbie

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My organization wants to get into VDIs soon and would like to use our existing Server 2012 environment to make that happen. We are wanting to stay away from getting other vendors in the mix (Citrix, VMware, etc.) so that we don't have another contact to reach out to if/when there are any issues.

This will be my first experience with VDIs and I am looking for some pointers on what to look for in the planning of deployment (test and production). I have watched the video from a few weeks ago from Spiceworks about VDIs but I am looking for some material to know more about how I can implement VDIs through Microsoft servers. I have seen, from past employers, the user experience but I need some behind the scenes knowledge of how it works and how to implement it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you

Chef Testing and Domain Controller Behavior

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During our testing, chef will be provisioning a bunch of new EC2 instances (windows instances) that will be connecting to the domain. The majority of these instances will be terminated once testing is complete. We want to ensure that we have a process in place for removing these terminated instances from the domain controllers. What are your thoughts on how to approach this? Any special procedure or tips you guys have out there?

This is being done in an AWS VPC in a non-prod environment, all boxes in testing will be utilizing a script that automatically joins them to a domain. The ultimate goal is to automate the spin up and the ability to terminate them later with little to no intervention by any folks on the AD/DNS backend (if possible).

Problem with W. Server 2008 R2 and Network Application

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Hi guys! I've this problem.

I've an application that is programmed in Visual FoxPro 6 and it used DBF and CDX files as their database. The biggest DBF file is about 1,1 GB and there are about 100 DBFs file (the rest are smaller).

The server is running W. 2008 R2 Standard and the application is served using a network share. There are about 60 pc client, using the application at all times.

When there is a power outage or some other error and our server goes down, one of the DBF files "goes back in time" one or two weeks.

For example: after the server hangs out: DBF #1 has records until 23/08/13. DBF #2 has records until 03/08/13, and the rest of the DBFs are just fine.

I've no idea where to look... could you help me out?

Thanks guys!

Hard drive addition on Windows 2003 Server

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We run a windows 2003 server as file storage and account department runs an application on it. The storage is almost filled up and I added another 500GB but the system doesn't detect it.

Gone through device manager but it does not show up.

What can I do?

Learning about Remote Desktop Services

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I'm a complete n00b to RDS and the whole area of shared hosted desktops, but I've been asked to look into it for our org, and I wonder if you might be able to share some learning resources where I could get up to speed?

The thing I'm trying to learn about is Shared Hosted Desktops - whether it's feasible to set up a remote desktop services 2012 server and provide shared hosted desktops to old hardware - what type of OS should be on the old hardware and how (if) it might all work.

I know it's a big area to learn, but I'm not looking to become a technical expert in how to actually build/manage it (not yet!), just looking to understand the pros and cons of the main options.

The reason for focussing on RDS is because that is available to us for free (as a non-profit with Microsoft donation) and it would be preferable at the moment to investigate that free option before something like Xen Desktop.

This is the kind of direction I might like to go in.... but I'm not sure yet what I'd need to set up on my clients so that people could smoothly log in each morning, nor do I know anything about what theming is possible to reduce their confusion.

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vdi-articles/general/working-with-user-profile-disks-on-session-based-desktop-deployments.html


Adding Domain Controller to existing domain, Server 2003

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Ok problem that has been dragging for a few days now that i really want to get resolved,

Our main domain controller developed disk issue, swapped out for a new one and it would not rebuild, the other disk then reported read errors, the system would not back up due to disk erros but was still up and running,

All our servers are physical,

knocked up a quick temporary hyper v server and added it as AD / DHCP / DNS to take the job from the failing server, transferred the roles, top 2 roles run at head office, we run RID PDC and infrastructure,

Once the failing server was shut down it would not reboot,

It was cleaned out of the domain with ntdsutil and manual clean up,

New disks in the server, clean server 2003 install added back to the domain,

all good so far

added AD / DHCP / DNS and ran into some issues where netlogon and sysvol would not replicate in so again all removed in place this time start again,

Now i have a server with 2003 installed, add it to the domain pointing at our 2 other DNS servers and it will not register its self in DNS, saying the update request timed out.

It can ping the DNS servers it is pointed at,

I have no idea what to do to get it registered,

Ipconfig /registerdns just results in the same failed reports in event viewer,

Any help gratefully received so i can move onto the next step

Thanks

Server not seeing itself when add/remove roles in Server 2012 :S

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I've got a Windows Server 2012 server that I've been trying to fix WSUS on. A suggestion I read from Microsoft was to change permissions on C:\WIndows to allow NETWORK SERVICE full access. Since doing this, when trying to add/remove roles in Server Manager from this server, it doesn't show up in the pool, despite it being a member. So I am using server manager locally on the server I wish to remove the WSUS role from, and it can't see itself.

Permissions on C:\WIndows are :

Everyone : FULL CONTROL (I added this for troubleshooting purposes after it all went wrong)

ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES : Full Control

CREATOR OWNER : Special permissions

SYSTEM : Full Control

Local Service : FULL CONTROL

Network Service : FULL CONTROL

Administrators : Full Control

Users : Read write modify

Trusted Installer : Full control.

this should have been replicated to all child folders also..

Setting up OpenVPN, help forwarding traffic in ISA 2004

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I've set up the keys and config files for Open VPN on server and client side. But I'm getting the following error, for which OpenVPN, give the following advice.

Rightly or wrongly I opened up UDP 1194 on my server and set up a "Server Publishing Rule" in ISA, which forwarded all traffice on UDP 1194 to my server's IP address. Is that the right way to go about it? I'm not sure I'm using the right kind of publishing rule...

"You get the error message: TLS Error: TLS key negotiation failed to occur within 60 seconds (check your network connectivity). This error indicates that the client was unable to establish a network connection with the server.

Solutions:

Make sure the client is using the correct hostname/IP address and port number which will allow it to reach the OpenVPN server.
If the OpenVPN server machine is a single-NIC box inside a protected LAN, make sure you are using a correct port forward rule on the server's gateway firewall. For example, suppose your OpenVPN box is at 192.168.4.4 inside the firewall, listening for client connections on UDP port 1194. The NAT gateway servicing the 192.168.4.x subnet should have a port forward rule that says forward UDP port 1194 from my public IP address to 192.168.4.4.
Open up the server's firewall to allow incoming connections to UDP port 1194 (or whatever TCP/UDP port you have configured in the server config file)."


DHCP IP address lease

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Is there a way to release a DHCP IP address from a client and then assign and reserve the released address to another client from Windows Server 2008 R2 Std. SP1? I know how to set up reservations once the client has the needed address. Thanks, Bill

getting socket error event id 10013 on Server 2012

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We're have installed Avaya VMPro software on a Windows 2012 Server OS that also happens to be a domain controller on the customers network. no matter what mail server we set the software to it gets a socket error event id 10013. Any thoughts on how to resolve this?

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