ADFIND - what it can do for you!!

Great tool for finding things in Active Directory. Download it at http://www.joeware.net/win/free/tools/adfind.htm

Example 1:

Find out if an SMTP address is in use and where it is:

Your AD Domain namespace is domain.local. You are trying to find someone@myemailaddress.com.

adfind -b dc=domain,dc=local -f proxyaddresses=smtp:someone@myemailaddress.com

More to come….

Making a Windows 2003 R2 server a DC

This is going to start being an issue when upgrading new servers to domain controllers. If you have Windows 2003 R2 installed on a machine and you try to run DCPROMO, you will get an error message saying that the schemas do not match. HUH?
So it says to run ADPREP with the \forestprep switch…no problem. But when you run it from the R2 CD it says that it has already been run. Now what?
Some history…at this point your Active Directory should be a version 30…and you need version 31 of the schema to upgrade a R2 server to a DC. So this is what you need to do.

Pull out the Windows 2003 R2 CD2 and drill down to \CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP\adprep.exe with the \forestprep.

This will bring your AD up to version 31 and you can now DCPROMO the R2 server.
Side note…who knew you actually needed the second CD for anything.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917385

Shutdown script for Exchange 2003 on a Domain Controller

Exchange needs to be shut down before rebooting a server that is also a Domain Controller (DC). Here is a link with a simple shutdown script and how to set it up as a Group Policy.

http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Automating-Quicker-Exchange-2000-2003-DC-reboot.html

How to share an SSL certificate between OWA servers

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=313299