Exchange-ing Ideas

Synchronization Problems with EAS or Entourage?

Missy Koslosky — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:11:17 GMT

Earlier today, I ran across an interesting issue - apparently several (mostly small - several running SBS) organizations have run into issues where Exchange ActiveSync or Entourage client sync fails when there are more than just a couple (and I mean as few as four) items in a folder. There is no correlation between the inability to synch and a specific folder or folder type - the issue has happened with contacts, the calendar, and just the standard Inbox folder. There aren't neessarily helpful error messages associated with this issue - timeouts are often seen, and the hex value 0×85010014 has also been seen.

This issue often is related to a third-party kernel driver - famv4.sys (File Access Manager, from Vision Works Solutions, Inc.). This file is used by some backup vendors to allow backup software access to open files. Generally, the backup vendors using this file are smaller vendors instead of the big-name software companies.

To isolate whether famv4.sys is causing problems with synch operations, you can disable famv4.sys through the registry:

Open regedt32 (or regedit, whichever) on the server
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
Find "famv4" (no quotes)
Change the value of "Startup" for famv4 to 4 (this disables the service)
Close the registry editor
Open a command prompt on the server
Type "net stop famv4" (no quotes), hit enter

If your ActiveSync or Entourage (or both) clients can synchronize now, you've isolated the problem - the bad news is that your backup software isn't going to work right now, so make sure you either a) go back and re-enable famv4.sys in the registry or b) sort out a different way to back up the server -- which option you take depends upon what will work best in your environment.

If you experience this problem, you should contact your backup vendor to report the issue and request a fix. You may also want to contact Vision Works Solutions (link above) so they are also aware of the problem.

This problem is also discussed by someone who's experienced it here: http://www.mytechnicallife.com/2008/08/20/exchange-2007entourage-famv4sys-issue-summary-from-microsoft/

Here's hoping this one doesn't bite you.

(Question: Why is synchronization abbreviated sync instead of synch?? I really feel like the trailing "h" needs to be there; it just feels incomplete without it. So I use "synch" mostly. Except when I don't. I claim no reliability on this issue.)

Busy Networking Week!

Missy Koslosky — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:43:00 GMT

This was a busy week as far as networking goes -- on Wednesday, there was a meeting of the Central Oregon Information Systems User Group - COISUG for short, and today, the WoTech got together for lunch. I love lunch.

COISUG's meeting was pretty cool - I missed the beginning, but was able to catch most of the action. Chris Avis of Microsoft did a nice long session on Windows Server 2008, Virtualization, and Hyper-V. As these are areas of interest that I don't get much of a chance to dig into, it was great to be able to relax and learn without the "OMG, deadline!" pressure that can sometimes happen. I've done a fair amount of virtualization in the past, using several different technologies to host the virtual machines, and now I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into Hyper-V. I do think I need a new box for testing, though... Either that or I can build a virtual machine to host W2K8 and run Hyper-V in that virtual machine. That would be so ugly, even though I do have 4GB of RAM in my laptop.

Before we moved to Bend, it had been years since I'd been to a user group, and I'm so happy to be involved in the groups in this area - there is a great breadth of expertise in the area and it's really nice to be able to talk geek with others, especially since I'm not local to 3Sharp's office and don't get the daily dose of geek talk I would, were I there.

It looks like I'll be doing a presentation on Exchange 2007 at an upcoming COISUG meeting - it's been a while since I've given a presentation, and I'm really looking forward to it!

ESM on Vista

Missy Koslosky — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:42:19 GMT

Yay for the Exchange Team! There's now a version of Exchange System Manager that can run on Vista - I know most folks running Vista are now used to just terminaling into the server to do whatever they need to do administratively, but it's NICE to have options!

Using Gmail for Personal Email

Missy Koslosky — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:55:57 GMT

Since 1999, I've used an mvps.org e-mail address as my primary method of personal communication; several months ago, the wonderful folks who run mvps.org (free!) for the MVP community had some issues, and made some changes to their policies. This led me to try an alternative approach - I started having Gmail fetch all messages from my mvps.org account.

After spending some time trying to adjust to Gmail's interface, and having difficulties with the un-sortability of e-mail in Gmail (I know, I know, Google's theory is that you can just search for messages, but frankly that just wasn't working for me), I set up Outlook to download my mail from Gmail using POP, while also leaving my email in Gmail, just in case. This lets me happily sort my mail (and Oh! I love to sort it, and I love the various views I can create, and I love Search Folders too!).

The good news about Gmail is that they really have removed a lot of the spam I was seeing -- for the past 30 days, I have over 6,000 messages in Gmail's spam folder - when I was using my mvps.org account without filtering the messages through Gmail, Outlook's junk mail rules took care of most of the spam, but I still needed to manually clear out messages, and I was in the habit of doing so every few days. With Gmail, because I rarely look at the web interface and rely on Outlook as my client, I wasn't looking in my spam folder. Bad idea for me, because apparently Gmail thinks that, among others, my husband's cousin, who's in China, and my MVP lead, who has a Microsoft address, are lousy spammers. And they're not, they're lovely people! Now I'm looking at going through all 6K spam messages to see who else has been mis-identified as a spammer. Sigh.

Other gripes about Gmail's online interface:

I'm really used to having inline spell and grammar checking. I don't make tons of errors, but I do make them. Outlook lets me know this on the fly, with Gmail I have to think about it.
I can't make folders. See my comment on search above. I LOVE folders and don't think search is adequate.
Why oh why can't I flag a message with a reminder?? Stupid stars just aren't enough of a visual cue for me.
I want a preview pane. The snippet of the message is helpful, but a reading pane is so much more useful

I do like the way Gmail handles conversations, and wish that Outlook was better in the conversation view; I've found it to be unreliable in the past.

Oh, and someone else named Missy apparently thinks that my Gmail address is actually her Gmail address. It isn't. Her friends send me cute jokes at times, but I've also gotten messages with business information that I KNOW I shouldn't have seen. If you're the other Missy, please sort out what your real Gmail address is, because I get enough mail as it is! (Why can't the messages from her friends be flagged as spam, instead of those from my friends??)