Are you a Volume License customer, looking to migrate out of EBS per Microsoft's offer? Here are the part numbers you'll need to order the new media. Microsoft says to order from your original reseller. If you have EBS Premium, your SQL media will already work, so they have not included that SKU.

Windows Server Standard 2008  P73-03830

Windows Server Standard 2008R  P73-04819

Exchange Standard 2007   312-03748

System Center Essentials 2007  UCH-01603 System Center Essentials 2010  UCH-02057

Details on how to move out of Essential Business Server are now live at http://www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/default.aspx. Well, really it is here at http://www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/offers.aspx. You have until December 31, 2010 to do the change over if you are going to.

Go to http://www.mssmallbiz.com/training/ and scroll down toward the bottom to register. Session is at 9 AM today. If you miss it, go back and download it and watch.

Don't miss PSSBS' own Jamison West as he shares insight into his proven successful MSP business with the rest of us! Thank you Jamison! :-)

Building and Growing Your Managed Services Business
The decision to transform a business from a reactive break/fix model to a proactive recurring model is not one to be taken lightly. In this session we will discuss the following:

A definition of Managed Services

Resources for more information on this business model
o Industry Conferences and Events
o Peer Groups
o User Groups
o Media

What needs to change in your business to support the new model
o 180° Thinking
o Marketing and Sales Message – Selling your brand, not your vendors brands
o Excellent Tools (PSA & RMM)
o Compensation Incentive Strategies
* Service – Pay for utilization vs. profitability
* Sales – Hunter vs. Farmer
o Evolution vs. Revolution

SPEAKER BIO: Jamison West is the Founder and CEO of Jamison West Consulting Services (JWCS), an IT infrastructure management company driven to make technology work FOR business. He envisions a future where every small to mid-sized company will include their IT partner as a vital part of its core operations team.

In 1995, Jamison made the decision to combine his gadget-guy mentality, passion for technology, and innate entrepreneurial spirit into an independent company where he could create solutions for small to mid-sized businesses that would cause a radical shift in their long-term success. Recognizing the immediate need for businesses to have IT partners they could rely on in the face of ever-evolving systems and an onslaught of highly sophisticated viral threats, JWCS was launched and began serving clients in Seattle and the surrounding area. In late 2006 Jamison decided to dramatically change his business model from a lifestyle sole proprietorship doing break/fix work to a structured Managed Services business. Since then he has incorporated and grown to a staff of 10 with revenues well north of $1M. Jamison’s enthusiasm makes it easy to rally others into his corporate vision: To be recognized as the region’s most trusted advisor for IT Services, ensuring that our clients can focus solely on their business while we focus on seamlessly integrating technology.

Jamison holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Washington. When he’s not personally overseeing JWCS, he devotes time to his kids and wife, a good book, or even a pickup basketball game to create a positive work/life balance.

Thanks Brad for the post "Windows Management with MDOP" to bring awareness to the Advanced Group Policy Management and DaRT pieces of MDOP. If you are in IT and not using it in your Windows network, you're missing a great tool set in MDOP.

Trying to find the signature file location, where the nk2 file is located, or other Outlook settings so you can take them with you over to your new Windows 7 PC? Check out Microsoft's KB 287070 for great info on PST files, and the best part, where the nk2 and signature files are located. Copied that info below for you too.

How to back up Outlook settings files

If you have customized settings, such as toolbar settings and Favorites, that you want to replicate on another computer or restore to your computer, you might want to include the following files in your backup:

• Outcmd.dat: This file stores toolbar and menu settings.
• ProfileName.fav: This is your Favorites file, which includes the settings for the Outlook bar.
• ProfileName.nk2: This file stores the Nicknames for AutoComplete.
• Signature files: Each signature has its own file and uses the same name as the signature that you used when you created it. For example, if you create a signature named MySig, the following files are created in the Signatures folder:
  • MySig.htm: This file stores the HTML Auto signature.
  • MySig.rtf: This file stores the Microsoft Outlook Rich Text Format (RTF) Auto signature.
  • MySig.txt: This file stores the plain text format Auto signature.
  The location of the signature files depends on the version of Windows that you are running. Use this list to find the appropriate location:
  • Windows Vista: Drive\users\Username\appdata, where Drive represents the drive that Outlook was installed to and Username represents the user name that Outlook was installed under.
  • Windows XP or Windows 2000: Drive\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, where Drive represents the drive that Outlook was installed to and Username represents the user name that Outlook was installed under.
  • Windows 98 or Windows Me: Drive\Windows\Local Settings\Application Data, where Drive represents the drive that Outlook was installed to.

Note If you use Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor, signatures are stored in the Normal.dot file as AutoText entries. You should back up this file also.

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Chris Puckett from Product Quality]

If you have installed the Microsoft .NET Framework v4.0 package on your SBS 2003 server, you may see the following error in the SBS console under Monitoring and Reporting:

Auto-started Services Not Running

Microsoft .Net Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_X86

In normal conditions, these services should be running. For details, it is recommended that you review errors in the Event log related to the service.

A KB article has been published to address this issue. For more information and the resolution steps, visit the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2290390

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Damian Leibaschoff from Commercial Technical Support]

The requirements to install SQL 2008 Standard Edition for Small Business are documented on this post:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/03/23/requirements-for-installing-sql-2008-standard-edition-for-small-business.aspx

Under certain circumstances, you may encounter the block even though all the requirements seem to be met, here is a checklist of things to verify:

• Make sure you are logged in as a domain administrator on the server where you are attempting the install. The SQL setup must be run while logged in to the domain with valid
  domain credentials. The user needs to have domain administrator and local administrator rights.
• Confirm the domain environment health, the verification process needs to be able to talk to all your domain controllers.
• If using SBS, do not use the SBS console to count the number of computers and users, you will have to rely on what is showing in the native Active Directory Users and Computers mmc.

You can also enable verbose logging to get detailed output of which test is failing so you can take corrective action.

To enable verbose logging perform the following steps:

1. After you have experienced the block the first time, close the SQL setup.
2. Open notepad as an administrator and save the following contents:
   

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
   
   <configuration> 
   
   <system.diagnostics> 
   
   <trace autoflush="true" /> 
   
   <sources> 
   
   <source name="SBSADCheck" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" 
   
   switchValue="Verbose"> 
   
   <listeners> 
   
   <add name="myListener" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener" initializeData="log.txt" /> 
   
   </listeners> 
   
   </source> 
   
   </sources> 
   
   </system.diagnostics> 
   
   </configuration>

3. Save the file in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Release\x64\Setup100.exe.config
4. Launch the SQL setup and run through to the block.
5. Collect the Verbose log from %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Release\x64\log.txt

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Damian Leibaschoff from Commercial Technical Support]

When this SBS 2008 call first came in, the main issue was the Console was not launching (it was actually crashing). Soon we realized that a lot of other services and programs were not able to start successfully on this server. These included most of the Exchange services, the Windows SBS Manager service and almost all of the SBS wizards to mention a few of the issues

At first we thought it could have been related to IPv6 being misconfigured ( Issues After Disabling IPv6 on Your NIC on SBS 2008) but we soon ruled that out.

The exception on every failure was always the same:

Exception type: System.BadImageFormatException

We decided to continue using the console.exe process to investigate the crashes.

Process Monitor showed the following output:

Right on the first page we noticed something odd, our Console is a 64-bit Framework application, yet the 32-bit libraries were being loaded.

When we launched the console under a debugger, we noticed the same strange behavior, it was loading the wrong bitness for the framework assemblies:

CommandLine: "C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Bin\console.exe"
Symbol search path is: SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
ModLoad: 00000000`51090000 00000000`515d8000 Console.exe
ModLoad: 00000000`77900000 00000000`77a86000 ntdll.dll
ModLoad: 00000000`77ac0000 00000000`77c20000 ntdll32.dll
ModLoad: 00000000`75770000 00000000`757b5000 C:\Windows\system32\wow64.dll
ModLoad: 00000000`75720000 00000000`7576e000 C:\Windows\system32\wow64win.dll
ModLoad: 00000000`75a70000 00000000`75a79000 C:\Windows\system32\wow64cpu.dll
(1c78.1fd8): Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)
ntdll!DbgBreakPoint:
00000000`77946060 cc int 3
0:000> g
ModLoad: 00000000`777d0000 00000000`778fd000 WOW64_IMAGE_SECTION
ModLoad: 00000000`75bf0000 00000000`75d00000 WOW64_IMAGE_SECTION
ModLoad: 00000000`777d0000 00000000`778fd000 NOT_AN_IMAGE
ModLoad: 00000000`77700000 00000000`777cd000 NOT_AN_IMAGE
ModLoad: 00000000`73070000 00000000`730ba000 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mscoree.dll
ModLoad: 00000000`75bf0000 00000000`75d00000 C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNEL32.dll

We ruled out file corruption, especially since most other 64-bit Framework consumers were failing. At this point we started looking at what can cause the Framework to act like this.

We found our answer on a registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Enable64Bit

The default value for this key is 1, yet on this case it was set to 0, forcing framework applications to run in a 32-bit environment.

To correct this, we changed the value back to 1 and rebooted, we could also have used the native tool that configures this:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Ldr64.exe set64
loading kernel32...done.
retrieved GetComPlusPackageInstallStatus entry point
retrieved SetComPlusPackageInstallStatus entry point
Setting status to: 0x00000001
SUCCESS

As expected, all the applications started working as designed after correcting this.

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Damian Leibaschoff from Commercial Technical Support ]

Support for Windows Server 2000 ended on July 13,2010. This means that support for the operating system component (including IIS) of Small Business Server 2000 has also concluded.

For more information please check the following site:

http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1131#tab0

For more information on the support lifecycle:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

It is important to note that the support date for the Small Business Server product package is determined by its individual component product’s respective support lifecycles. Please review the individual component product’s support lifecycle to determine its length of support.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2807

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Jonas Svensson from the SBS Product Group]

Today’s the last day of the Worldwide Partner Conference! It’s been a busy conference full of presentations and demos about the upcoming Windows Small Business Server code name “Aurora” and Windows Small Business Server “7”.

Here are Kevin Kean (General Manager of the Windows Home and Small Business Server team) and Fabian Uhse (Program Manager) showing off Aurora in the HP booth, with it’s very groovy 70s theme.

If you didn’t get a chance to see our products at WPC, check out the video summaries at:

- http://www.youtube.com/user/CoffeeCoaching#p/u/6/uFLSUdbP3Ng

- http://www.youtube.com/user/CoffeeCoaching#p/u/1/XJiV-xwK6h0

- http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/us/search?phrase=coreinfra

We also have more information coming as we get ready for our upcoming beta programs. Sign up today to learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/sbs. Just look for the “Next Version of SBS - Learn More” link