» Computer Active is offering a free version of AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 for free. This offer is valid until January 17, 2008. I use the free edition on my PCs, but am going to upgrade them now. EDIT: The license will expire on December 1, 2008.
» Microsoft has added some new VHDs to their VHD Site including Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Beta 2 and Windows Server 2008 Beta 3.
» VMWare released VMWare Server 2 Beta today.
» How to install and enable the Windows Server virtualization CTP in Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate. I spent about 15 minutes trying to get this configured on my test Server 2008 machine before I realized that I had installed the 32-bit version of the OS. Doh!
» Internet Explorer is losing the “click to activate” requirement for embedded controls on a web page. Finally.
» Outlook Desktop places your Outlook calendar on the desktop and pin it so that it’s always visible. There are options to set the transparency so that you can see your desktop.
» Virtual Machine Additions for Linux. These additions improve the support for the display and mouse drivers, the SCSI drive emulation, and synchronization of the time and heartbeat between the guest and the host. It seems that they only support Redhat and SuSE flavors as of now.
» Get a TechNet Plus Direct subscription for $249 for one year. With this deal, you only get the download option for all the software. EDIT: I applied for my subscription and was approved in about a week.
» Microsoft has released the 120-day evaluation copy of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. You can read more about what it can do in the FAQ.
KEMMAPI.dll error when starting Outlook
18 September 2007 | logitech, outlook | Comments Off
I recently uninstalled Logitech’s SetPoint software for my mouse from my Windows XP machine. After uninstalling it, I started receiving the following error every time I started Outlook (see image below as well).
The Add-in “Redemption Helper Outlook Extension: (C:\Program Files\Logitech\SetPoint\KEMMAPI.dll) cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.
After searching around the net for a bit, I came across a solution that worked: delete the file named extend.dat from the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder. Replace username with your username. That solved the problem.
» Microsoft has released Service Pack 3 for Office 2003. KB923618 lists what changes were made in this service pack along with issues that may arise as a result of installing it.
» It turns out that Windows Vista and Live Messenger don’t play well together. The culprit seems to be Adobe Flash. Even after the suggested fix, it still has the possibility of crashing. UPDATE: After searching around some more online, I came across this fix for Acer laptops. A setting in their security management software was the culprit in my case.
Event ID 1001 and 3031
12 March 2007 | activesync, exchange 2003 | Comments Off
A couple of weeks ago, we had an issue where the Pocket PC phones were not syncing with the exchange server. I started to peruse through the logs and noticed that event id’s 1001 and 3031 were appearing quite frequently. After searching around, I came across KB 817379 for event id 3031 and KB 832297 for event id 1001.
After checking the security settings on the directories in IIS, I noticed that the back-end exchange server’s Exchange directory in IIS had the option for Integrated Windows Authentication unchecked. How it got unchecked, we have no idea. We hadn’t made any changes at all to either the front-end or back-end exchange server that day, so we were puzzled as to how this happened.
To fix this issue, we checked the option for Integrated Windows Authentication (see image below) on the Exchange directory in IIS on the back-end server and restarted both the servers. After they came back up, everything was back to normal.
Exchange 2003 OWA and Vista’s Internet Explorer issues
11 March 2007 | internet explorer, owa, vista | Comments Off
We recently acquired a Microsoft Vista machine to aid us in testing its compatibility with our software. As we started to test a few things, we noticed that we had an issue with OWA; when replying to a message, we’d get what looked like a broken image in the area where you would type your message (see image below). After a little searching around, we found out that Internet Explorer in Vista strips out the Dynamic HTML Editing ActiveX control (KB 911829). Microsoft released a patch for this particular issue for Exchange.
NOTE: The patch must be applied on both the frontend and backend Exchange servers.
Below is a screenshot of the window before the patch is applied.
And a screenshot of the window after the patch is applied.
» Windows Server Update Services Downloads offers some good utilities to aid in deploying WSUS to your network. I used Client Diagnostic Tool quite frequently to make sure that the clients were pointing to the internal update server instead of Windows Update.