Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 Released!
Microsoft announced late yesterday (approx. 5:20pm Pacific Time) that Windows 2003 SP1 had been released and would be available for download. Also worth noting is that if you are running an Exchange 2003 cluster, there is an important hotfix that you'll need to deploy. Evan Dodds has blogged about the details of the hotfix over here. The KB article you'll want to take a look at is KB 841561. It is apparently only available via calling PSS right now, but calls for hotfixes are free of charge.

Windows 2003 SP1 brings some great added security benefits. If you haven't already taken a look at it, I encourage you to at least look at the release notes and added features. There are a number of welcome additions, such as Windows Firewall and Security Configuration Wizard (which will automatically turn off unneeded services depending on the role you choose). You can find the release notes here and there is a top 10 reasons why to install Service Pack 1 found here.
- posted by Ben Winzenz @ 8:23 AM 0 comments

 
Mozilla Thunderbird causes issues with Exchange?
I haven't seen this issue before, but just heard a report of it today. Apparently, if you install portions of Mozilla's suite (esp. Thunderbird) on your Exchange server [1], it will cause issues with Exchange services starting and will cause Exchange System Manager to crash upon opening. That's obviously not a good thing. Event logs for the error generated by System Manager would be similar to the following:

Faulting application exadmin.dll, version 6.5.7226.0, stamp 406d1e32, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.0, stamp 3e802494, debug? 0, fault address 0x000249d3.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Microsoft Exchange Server
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 3/28/2005
Time: 10:58:20 AM
User: N/A
Computer: EXCHANGE SERVER
Description:
Faulting application exadmin.dll, version 6.5.7226.0, stamp 406d1e32, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.0, stamp 3e802494, debug? 0, fault address 0x000249d3.

The apparent cause ended up being that Mozilla was replacing the default mapi32.dll file with it's own version and placing it in the \windows \system32 directory. The fix was to delete the mapi32.dll file that Mozilla placed in there and replace it with mapi32-moz-bak.dll (the backup copy Mozilla makes of the current mapi32.dll), then restarting the Exchange services.

[1] I'm not sure why one would put a 3rd party e-mail client on their Exchange server, but I suppose that's besides the point. For now, just be aware that this is a potential/probable issue if you install some or all portions of Mozilla's suite.
- posted by Ben Winzenz @ 2:08 PM 1 comments