Skydrive Uploader Tool Using Windows Explorer Mapped Drives

I'm sure Microsoft are currently working on a Skydrive Uploader Tool to integrate with the OS (Feel free to let me know if you have any further information).

In the meantime I have found a great tool called 'Cloud Desktop' from Gladinet for and one of its great features is that it integrates with skydrive (amongst others) enabling you to upload documents from Windows Explorer using mapped drives.

The product is currently in beta however from my personal testing so far I have had no problems.

***Update 03/02/10***
I've since found a free product which I personally prefer to Gladinet (due to lack of support response on email to issues) which seems to do the job. The utility is called Skydrive explored and can be downloaded here.

Microsoft SBS Server 2003 Can’t connect to internet with Grisoft AVG Antivirus

I have solved a big problem where an SBS Server all of sudden in November 2008 stopped downloading AV updates and could not connect to the internet.

Since then I have been manually applying AV updates and Windows Patches (Oh Fun!) however after having time to test various things I noticed an updated version of AVG SBS Suite from V8 to V8.5. After uninstalling version AVG 8 an IE window popped up with the usual asking me why I had uninstalled the product and all of a sudden the internet was working!

To conclude all along AVG was causing the SBS server to not be able connect to the internet. From reading various forums this was due to a an issue with a AV update file but searching the Grisoft support site had no results for this behaviour.

Another problem solved!

ISA 2006 / MOSS 2007 Forms Based Authentication Issue KB973737

I have today discovered an issue with ISA 2006 SP1 using forms based authentication to log into MOSS 2007.

The issue is that if you log into MOSS successfully (using the ISA form) and lets say you accidently select ‘Sign in as Different User’ then realise you didn’t actually want to logout, then log back in as the same user you experience an issue where ISA will reply to state ‘Access Denied’. However if you strip the url and enter the url without the ISA string it will log you straight back in without prompting. I don’t see this as a security issue however it could be misleading for users.

I have tested this issue with ISA connected to the domain and ISA in its own workgroup using LDAPS and both have the same behaviour.

I’m in the process of raising this with Microsoft and will post the update here…

**UPDATE 08/04/09**

MS have confirmed they can reproduce the error I am experiencing, however I need to produce a business case as to why it should be fixed.

Ongoing..... Will keep you posted.

**UPDATE 01/06/09**

Having spent many an hour working with Microsoft providing various diagnostic logs the issue has been identified and a hotfix is currently being produced I will post the link once the hotfix has been published.

**UPDATE 18/08/09**

Microsoft have sent me the hotfix for testing and I can confirm this fixes the issue. It still takes 3 attempts to logon however this is SharePoint functionality (feature :)) and not ISA related.

The KB for the article / hotfix is KB973737 and can now be downloaded from here.

Slipstreaming Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Updates

To speed up your installations of MOSS there is a way to add patches, service packs and updates to the MOSS media.

Copy the MOSS media to the local hard drive for example c:\moss.

Download your updates for MOSS from the Microsoft Website.

Save each of the files to a folder for example c:\updates. On each of the files run the downloaded executable from the command prompt and enter the parameter /extract:updates.

For example: wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:updates

Links below are for x86 architecture:

The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad59175c-ad6a-4027-8c2f-db25322f791b&displaylang=en

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4191a531-a2e9-45e4-b71e-5b0b17108bd2&displaylang=en

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3811C371-0E83-47C8-976B-0B7F26A3B3C4&displaylang=en

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=256CE3C3-6A42-4953-8E1B-E0BF27FD465B&displaylang=en

Running the /extract parameter will create a subfolder called c:\updates\updates and add all the extracted files to this directory. Once you have extracted all files to the directory copy them to the MOSS media folder c:\moss\x86\updates folder or c:\moss\x64\updates (remembering to download the x64 patches as apposed to the x86 links provided above).

Once all the updates have been added to the folder run setup.exe and this should automatically install the updates as part of the initial install.

To check these have installed correctly after the installation has completed go to SharePoint Central Administration-Operations-Servers in farm and you will find the version number here which will be something similar to 12.0.0.6219.

Penny Coventry has a great blog on how to find what version of MOSS your farm you are running, see link below:

http://www.mindsharpblogs.com/penny/articles/481.aspx 

Hopefully this should save you some time!

***UPDATE 26/05/09***

Service Pack 2 has now been released and can be found at the following links:

The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082&displaylang=en

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B&displaylang=en

From further reading there is no indication that Service Pack 2 includes the infrastructure updates so therefore download these files along with the Infrastructure Updates.

What's everyone Twittering about?

Twitter is a social networking and micro blogging site that allows users to send and receive updates (called tweets) about what they are up to. You can restrict your tweets to a circle of friends by following and being followed. More info can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter.

I am now twittering! My username is paulgrimley (original) and you can find me at http://www.twitter.com/paulgrimley

Using Custom Domains with Live Mail – For Free

A while ago I was looking for a solution where I could maintain my own email address (name@owndomain.com) whilst offloading hosting and storage. Most services charge a monthly fee for these types of services and the web access is pretty basic and I was looking for a Outlook Web Access user experience. I stumbled across a blog (apologies I can’t find this now) where someone explained that you can forward your MX records for your owndomain.co.uk to Microsoft Live Mail (most people remember / know this as Hotmail).

The link to this service is as follows https://domains.live.com/default.aspx.

You can buy domains relatively cheaply from various ISP’s and I would recommend someone like 1and1 who provide good administration pages to maintain your domains.

Another great feature of this offering is that you can choose to open your domain so that friends and family can have email on the same domain E.g. yourfriend@owndomain.com. 

All credit to Microsoft as they have been adding some excellent features such as Skydrive (25GB of Free online storage) and Photo Gallery as well as adding import functionality to upload old mails from Microsoft Outlook for the Live Mail Service.