Patrick's Blog

Error opening an Excel file

patrickhoban — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:27:04 +0000

When opening an Excel file that was exported from IBM Cognos Impromptu you receive an error that says, “The file you are trying to open, “Export.xls”, is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?”

If you click Yes the file still opens however the error is annoying. If you open the Excel file in notepad you will also notice it says, “This document is formatted for viewing in Microsoft Excel 2002 and subsequent versions. You are using a previous version of Excel.”

To fix the issue do the following. Back in Cognos click Report>Excel. In the Version drop-down change it from Excel 2002/2003 to Excel 2007 and higher then click OK. Now save the report again as an Excel file. Notice this time the file extension will be XLSX.

Ref – http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21350064, https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21355007

Surprised by Adobe Reader

patrickhoban — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:55:01 +0000

I cannot stand Adobe, especially Adobe Reader…man that is one horrible piece of software. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that Adobe Reader was actually able to open a PDF file that had 44,206 pages.

NLB Error

patrickhoban — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:39:47 +0000

I was checking some settings on my NLB cluster for my Terminal Services farm when I got the following error for one of the server.

Could not locate NLB on the specified computer. Error connecting to “server1.abc.com”

Looking through the Event Log I saw a bunch of random errors:

1104 – GroupPolicy – Windows was unable to read the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) filter information associated with the Group Policy object…

1090 – GroupPolicy – Windows failed to record Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) information, which describes the scope of Group Policy objects applied to the computer or user.

2314 – Server Administator – The initialization sequence of SAS components failed during system startup. SAS management and monitoring is not possible.

7034 – ervice Control Manager Eventlog Provider – The DSM SA Data Manager service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s).

The fix, run winmgmt /salvagerepository. If you get the error below, run the command again. You may need to find the service(s) that stopped & start it again (or reboot the server).

WMI repository salvage failed
Error code: 0x8007041B
Facility: Win32
Description: A stop control has been sent to a service that other running services are dependent on.

Error Using DIG

patrickhoban — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:50:07 +0000

While rebuilding a computer I got an error trying to run DIG that says, “The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more details.”

The fix is to install the Microsof Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable package. As luck would have it the installer is in the folder that the BIND binaries are extracted to. Just look for vcredist_x86.exe.

Update Fax Numbers in AD Using PowerShell

patrickhoban — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:43:12 +0000

Just a quick post on how to change the fax number for several users who use 555-555-1234 to 555-555-4321.

 Get-QADUser -SearchRoot "abc.com/ABC/Users" -LdapFilter '(facsimileTelephoneNumber=555-555-1234)' | Foreach-Object{Set-QADuser -Identity $_ -ObjectAttributes @{facsimileTelephoneNumber='555-555-4321'}}

Error after Upgrade Exchange 2010 to SP1

patrickhoban — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:47:31 +0000

After upgrading Exchange 2010 RTM to SP1 I started getting the following error:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchange ADAccess
Event ID:      2937
Task Category: Validation
Level:         Warning
Computer:      EX1.domain.com
Description: Process w3wp.exe () (PID=316). Object [CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=com]. Property [HomeMTA] is set to value [domain.com/Configuration/Deleted Objects/Microsoft MTA DEL:c4ab6128-37aa-4e55-b99b-1aa8979a70e9], it is pointing to the Deleted Objects container in Active Directory. This property should be fixed as soon as possible.

It didn’t seem to be causing any issues but an error is still an error. The quick fix is to run the following command:

Get-Mailbox | Update-Recipient

Ref: http://www.expta.com/2010/09/fix-for-event-id-2937-msexchange.html, http://d1it.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/eventid2937/

Error Removing ActiveSync Partnership

patrickhoban — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:44:18 +0000

I was doing a little cleanup/verification of all users & the devices that are syncing to Exchange. When I ran the following command I noticed that a test account still had two partnerships set up.

Get-ActiveSyncDevice | ft userdisplayname,name -AutoSize

UserDisplayName Name

———————————– ——————————————-

domain.com/Users/EAS Test TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899

domain.com/Users/EAS Test htcliberty§HTCAnda1b56cda

To remove the partnership you must use the Identity attribute. You can either run Get-ActivesyncDevices & find the Identity or just use UserDisplayName/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/Name from the previous results. For example, the identity of the first one from the list above would be domain.com/Users/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899.

Putting it all together the PowerShell command to remove the first partnership would be:

Remove-ActiveSyncDevice -Identity “domain.com/Users/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899″

However when I ran that command it failed with the following error:

The ActiveSyncDevice domain.com/Users/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899 cannot be found.

+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (0:Int32) [Remove-ActiveSyncDevice], ManagementObjectNotFoundException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : 7FA0B7B6,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Tasks.RemoveMobileDevice

That user had actually been moved to another OU (domain.com/TestUsers). So I modified the command & ran it again:

Remove-ActiveSyncDevice -Identity “domain.com/TestUsers/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899″

It failed again with the following error:

Couldn’t find ‘domain.com/TestUsers/EAS Test’ as a recipient.

+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Remove-ActiveSyncDevice], RecipientNotFoundException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : 8B934B04,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Tasks.RemoveMobileDevice

Turns out someone disabled the Exchange mailbox (i.e. removed all exchange attributes). So I re-created the mailbox for the EAS Test account & ran the command again:

Remove-ActiveSyncDevice -Identity “domain.com/TestUsers/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/TestActiveSyncConnectivity§946080899″

Success!

Now to remove the other one I run the command again updating it for the other partnership.

Remove-ActiveSyncDevice -Identity “domain.com/TestUsers/EAS Test/ExchangeActiveSyncDevices/htcliberty§HTCAnda1b56cda”

Starting Up Database Error in SQL 2008

patrickhoban — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:24:01 +0000

After installing SQL 2008 SP3 I started getting hundreds of these event log entries.

Source: MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS
Event ID: 17137
Description: Starting up database ‘AdventureWorks2008′.

This is due to the AUTO_CLOSE option being turned on. To read more about that setting have a look at the link below. Long story short…you don’t want it on.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190249.aspx

To fix the issue open SQL Server Management Studio. Right click the database that is being logged in the error & select Properties. Select Options. Set Auto Close to False. Click OK. No more error. Repeat as needed for other databases.

Error Mounting New Database

patrickhoban — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:33:32 +0000

When trying to mount a newly created Exchange 2010 database I received an error that said:

Failed to mount database ‘DB03′.

Error:
Couldn’t mount the database that you specified. Specified database: DB03; Error code: An Active Manager operation failed. Error: The database action failed. Error: Operation failed with message: MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010f, ec=-2147221233)
. [Database: DB03, Server: EX1.domain.com].

An Active Manager operation failed. Error: The database action failed. Error: Operation failed with message: MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010f, ec=-2147221233)
. [Database: DB03, Server: EX1.domain.com]

An Active Manager operation failed. Error: Operation failed with message: MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010f, ec=-2147221233)
. [Server: EX1.domain..com]

MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010f, ec=-2147221233)

The quickfix…close EMC & wait a few minutes. Then open EMC & mount it again.

Double Quotes in WordPress

patrickhoban — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:33:30 +0000

In a previous post of mine I put the contents of a REG file for people to copy & paste into a REG file so they could import it. In a REG file the VALUE is enclosed in double quotes like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\10.0\AdobeViewer]
"EULAAcceptedForBrowser"=dword:00000001

The problem was the value kept showing up in “fancy” double quotes:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\10.0\AdobeViewer]
“EULAAcceptedForBrowser”=dword:00000001

When people would try to import the REG file it didn’t work. The trick was to go to the HTML tab in the WordPress editor & replace “ with "e;.