Exchange 2003 Shutdown Script

This comes in very handy:

net stop "Microsoft Exchange Information Store" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange System Attendant" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange IMAP4" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange POP3" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Management" /y
shutdown /r /t 00

The above is coming from this wonderful site:
http://www.amset.info/exchange/shutdown-script.asp

Cheers!

ESX 3.5 Host unable to restart

In my new VMware Infrastructure 3 environment, there were times were an ESX host crashed and failed to restart. Here's the solution provided by VMware:

1. Reboot and start (Troubleshooting) console.
2. Login as "root"
3. At the commmand prompt, type the following:
"esxcfg-boot -p" (Enter)
"esxcfg-boot -b" (Enter)
"esxcfg-boot -r" (Enter)
4. The above would clear the boot ini and log files. Type "reboot" (Enter) to reboot the ESX host.

For proactive monitoring, here's what could be done:

1. Login as "root"
2. At the command prompt, type "df -h".
3. This command would display the size and % utilized for each partitions. The /boot partition should be below 50% utilized.
4. If the /boot partition is above 50%, use the procedure above and reboot the ESX server to avoid a crash.

Cheers!

God's hidden blessings

If I tell you, "poop is better than gold!", you must think I am either drunk or crazy. But yet, this is really how I feel ever since my son is born...

My son is only 2.5 months old and he's been having constipation ever since he came home. We've been following our pediatrician's "prune juice therapy" a little loosely because we worried that it may affect his digestive system even though we've been reassured time after time that this therapy is much more natural and have no side effect.

So this past Wednesday night my son had a "big one" and we kind of let our guard down a bit on Thursday. Then my son's condition progressively got worse: he could not sleep, and he would spit up and scream and cry like crazy in the middle of a feeding. This has never happened before. Yesterday, he started to lose his appetite and was eating maybe less than 50% of what he would normally take in. We finally brought our son to the pediatrician. Her diagnosis was that most likely it's because of constipation as it would greatly affect the reflux or could even cause acid reflux. That would explain why my son stayed up for 12+ hours on Friday because the discomfort, and would scream and cry during the middle of a feeding.

The pediatrician then performed the necessary procedures but yielded no results. Then she gave us some guidelines of what to do after we brought him back home. I remembered at least prayed for my son a few times during that afternoon that he could "poop". Then finally at around 10:00 PM the "poop" finally came. My wife and I were praising and thanking God while we cleaned up the mess. Yes, the scene was pretty disgusting to us(what could you expect?) but yet we saw that God was able to bring out the dirt from our son so he could become healthy again.

Likewise, how are we handling disappointments, betrayals, tragedies, hardships, difficulties that come our way? Are we able to see God's hidden blessings behind these "dirt" and be able to thank Him and give Him praises?

Romans 12:1-2

¹Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. ²Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Microsoft the Ultimate Steal for Students is live again!!!

If you want a complete set of Office without breaking your bank account and you are a current student with a valid .edu e-mail address, you may really want to check this out:

http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx

Cheers!

Fw: Info on Downadup / Conflicker (worm) and what to do about it

Dear All,

Here's a forward from Mark Minasi newsletter that I've received today. It contains useful information on how to look for and prevent the latest virus/worm outbreak since last Friday. Hope you find it helpful!

"Hi All --

Just a quick note about the Conflicker / Downadup worm that's gotten a bunch of press lately. It's on the grow, so it's worth taking a moment and checking your systems (and, more likely, your friends' home systems).

I view it as an important threat to address because it's one of those "remote code execution" exploits, which is security-ese for "you don't have to do anything to get this except (1) don't patch and (2) expose port 135 (RPC) to the Internet." What's scarier is that it puts itself on USB sticks and puts an autorun.inf file on those sticks, meaning that if your system's infected and you take a USB stick out of your system and hand it to someone and that person pops the USB stick into a system that hasn't disabled autorun, then that other person's computer is now infected. (I really hate autorun and disable it -- you can do it from group policies or Control Panel. In Vista, it's in Control Panel / Hardware and Sound / AutoPlay. On XP, open My Computer and right-click anything under "Devices with Removable Storage" and look on the AutoPlay tab.)

Microsoft published the patch, MS08-067 on 23 October '08, so you probably have nothing to worry about if you automatically download and install Microsoft's hotfixes in a timely manner. If not, any major anti-malware tool can identify and clean it, or just download the latest version of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool (the 19 January version) from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads, then run it by typing "mrt" and follow the prompts. Once finished, MRT offers a hyperlink "View detailed results of the scan." In that report refers to the worm as Win32/Conflicker, rather than the "Downadup" name used by many sources.

I hope this helps, and apologies to those for whom this is old news -- it'd just be a shame to allow a bunch of dirtbags to build another bot army."

Cheers, and take action against this worm right away if you haven't!

Meeting PCI Security Standard with IIS SSL

As a web development manager/network administrator, we've been asked by many of our clients to meet the PCI Security Standard. Since we are an MS shop and use IIS primarily, one common vulnerability is the IIS/SSL protocol not meeting the security standard. According to Microsoft, all SSL protocols and ciphers (including the ones with known vulnerabilities) are all "enabled" by default. Hence, to meet the PCI Security Standard, these vulnerabilities must be addressed. Here's my own quick and dirty list of what must be disabled based on varioius sources for my own use:

1. 322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

2. Start->Run->Regedt32.

3. Navigate to each of the item in the following list. If the "Enabled" DWORD is not there, you could safely create one by right click on the item, then "New->DWORD" value. Please remember that "0x00000000" means "FALSE" AND "0xffffffff" means "TRUE". For example, setting "Enabled" DWORD value to "0x00000000" means "Disable"; while "0xffffffff" means "Enable" (yeah I myself find it pretty confusing also.)

4. Here's the list of entries in the registry that should be disabled:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Server]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Client]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Server]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Client]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 40/128]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\DES 56/56]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\MD5]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC2 40/128]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 56/128]

5. Exit out of Registry Editor and reboot the computer.

(Disclaimer: The information is only based on the compilation of various sources on the Internet. I'm not employed by Microsoft and the information above should not be considered as official information. I will not bear any responsibility for any system crashes/damages/liability as a result of utilizing the above information. Please use at your own risk.)

Seagate Drive Gone Bad? Don't worry. Here's the link to check your warranty

I've just seen my dear friend on Facebook saddened by a broken Seagate hard drive. The frustration is understandable, so here's my humble attempt to cheer him up a bit:

http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp

If for nothing, at least you would have a spare drive available for backup or whatever purpose suits. I've personally RMAed a couple Seagate hard drives in the past and it seems Seagate is pretty good at shipping the replacement.

Just a personal tip to share with all Dell desktop users. Almost all latest Dell Inspiron, Vostro (possibly other lines also) already come with SATA RAID configuration in the BIOS (not activated by default). For maximum data security, all it takes is 2 identical hard drives to form a RAID 1 array (e.g. 2 x 1TB). Yes, you may only get 1TB storage out of 2 x 1TB hard drive, but it's 1TB fully redundant data storage! So if 1 of the hard drives goes bad, your computer would still work with the remaining good one while you go back to manufacturer (e.g. Seagate) and get your replacement hard drive (Seagate provides 5-year warranty on most of their hard drives). Just some food for thought!!!

Cheers!!!