Monday, August 30, 2010

Trend Micro WFBS Service Pack fails to install on SBS 2008

Just encountered an issue installing SP2 for Worry Free Business Security 6. The installer errors at the "Stop World Wide Web Publishing Service".

The dialog reads "The World Wide Web Publishing Service needs to finish a task now in progress. Please wait a few minutes before trying to install SP2".

This is caused by ther Terminal Services Gateway service, which depends on the WWW Publishing service.

Stopping the Terminal Services Gateway service prior to starting the installation will allow the service pack to install. You will need to restart the service manually after the installation.

Of course, it does mean you will need to find another way onto the server to install this remotely (Thanks HP for iLO).

EDIT: Subsequently found this post on the Trend forum relating to the issue.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Windows 7 Updates failing

Uncovered an strange issue with certain windows updates failing. Also problems installing applications and the Visual C runtimes.

Turns out to be an issue described here

Monday, August 23, 2010

HyperV issues with SnapShots

We use snapshots regularly prior to patches or changes to virtual machines. Usually this process works very well.

Today I encountered issues after trying to delete a snapshot to a virtual machine. The Hyper-V manager reported that the merge failed, then all subsequent attempts to merge or remove the snapshot also failed. This appears to related to the core configuraton, as all of the VM's I was working on exhibited the same issues.

In the end I worked around the problem by creating new VM's, manually merging the snapshots and attaching the VHD's to the newly created replacement VM's.

Unfortunately this means the NIC's are no longer the same, so static IP's etc need to be reassigned.

This blogpost has a comprehensive how to for merging single and multiple snapshots manually.

With the VM's now running, I can begin to investigate the root cause of the issue.

The following technet articles detail some of the underlying configuration for a Hyper-V host.

Backing up and restoring Virtual Server

Virtual Server folders and files

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

First steps on Aurora

The Aurora preview has just been released, and I have patiently waited most of the day for the download to complete. My current prefered Virtualisation solution is Oracle VirtualBox. My first attempt at installation failed, with an error 0xc0000225.

This is apparently caused by missing BIOS APIC functionality, so enabling IO APIC for the VM fixed this. Second was the installation wouldn't continue without a NIC, which wasn't discovered. Changing from the default to the Intel PRO/1000 MT Server NIC fixed that issue.

The box seems to run pretty slick VM'd and the dashboard is great. I'll be playing more over the next couple of days.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Trend Micro Worry Free Business disk space cleaner

Out of the Box, Worry Free Business Security can use quite a bit of disk space. I've often wondered if any of this can be purged. Turns out Trend have a tool to do just that. This article even discribes running it as a scheduled task.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Folder permissions monitoring

A client has a situation where they have a small internal IT team that manages the day to day administration of the site. The client manages a large amount of highly sensitive data, which the admins do not require access to.

This data is stored in folders and the appropriate NTFS folder permissions applied. However, the client was not comfortable with the knowledge that the internal team could still give themselves access to these folders.

In the end we settled on a simple solution. We enabled auditing on those folders for the change permissions and take ownership. We then uses EventSentry light to email the manager should a change be made.

Certainly not failsafe, but a sufficient solution for the client.