So one of the questions that comes to mind every now and then in technical circles (and outside as well) is “Why doesn’t it take so long for my machine to boot?”. Just what’s going on in there while these friendly, soothing graphics come up on the screen, and I wait and wait for a… Continue reading Why do I have long boot times? Pt 1
Author: jeffstokes2014
GUI Tool to collect ETW tracing, dumps, etc
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/e8649e35-26b1-4e73-b427-c2886a0705f4 So, check this out. It allows you to collect ETW tracing, dumps, all kinds of stuff. It does not work on Windows XP, but still, a handy little tool nonetheless.
SPA, not your typical freeware
In the Vital Signs workshop, we touch upon the tool SPA (Server Performance Advisor). This unsung hero of performance evaluation deserves some love, which is why I’m writing about it over 5 years after its last update was published and made available on the downloads site, here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61a41d78-e4aa-47b9-901b-cf85da075a73&displaylang=en So, Clint Huffman, creator of PAL, wrote… Continue reading SPA, not your typical freeware
On the road again, I just can’t wait to get on the road again….
So I’m a PFE now, Premier Field Engineer. It’s an interesting gig, sort of like running your own company within Microsoft. I’m doing Platforms now, instead of Exchange. Trying to keep the mind limber and all. So far I’ve been doing shadowing of other PFEs as they do things like Active Directory Risk Assessments and… Continue reading On the road again, I just can’t wait to get on the road again….
Defeated by Unexpected Transaction Log File growth
Applies to Exchange 2003, concepts apply to 2007 as well. I’ve bumped into a few cases recently where the customer had unexpected transaction log file growth that caused the server to dismount a storage group due to lack of disk space. In this post I’ll attempted to explain why this occurs, how to troubleshoot it,… Continue reading Defeated by Unexpected Transaction Log File growth
How to get rid of 9646 events
Applies to Exchange 2003 Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeIS Event Category: General Event ID: 9646 Description: Mapi session “/o=<org>/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=<userName>” exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type “session”. Seen these in your environment? Sometimes they are caused by desktop search engines opening too many MAPI sessions, other times they are because your… Continue reading How to get rid of 9646 events
Database Status Unknown in 2k7 EMC? This might be why….
Applies to Exchange 2007 So I ran into a case today that was pretty interesting. The symptoms were a fairly generic error in the app log: Event ID: 4001Task Category: GeneralLevel: ErrorKeywords: ClassicUser: N/AComputer: server nameDescription:A transient failure has occurred. The problem may resolve itself in awhile. The service will retry in 56 seconds. Diagnostic… Continue reading Database Status Unknown in 2k7 EMC? This might be why….
Repeating 623 version store error.
Applies to Exchange 2003 I had a case a couple weeks ago I thought I’d write about. What was happening is the Version Store would run out of memory and a 623 error would throw. Version Store buckets allocated would climb from 4 to over 2000 in less than 5 minutes. The store would then… Continue reading Repeating 623 version store error.
How to fix smashed schema in Exchange 2003
Dan and I and some other engineers wrote up a blog post you can find here on how to recover from a smashes schema scenario on your Exchange Servers. It’s pretty succinct so I don’t have anything to add to it, it’s an interesting read though.
How to determine who is connecting to your server in cached mode.
Applies to: Exchange 2000/2003 This may seem like a basic thing to some people, but for those who don’t know, here goes. This can be easily done by running Exmon, available here. So download Exmon and fire it up on your Exchange Server. Go to the By Clientmon tab, and in there you’ll see… Continue reading How to determine who is connecting to your server in cached mode.