How to E-Mail backup notifications for Windows Backup

I love SBS - but we occasionally get a server that doesn't use it but we will still want to use Windows Backup. I hate not having reports, therefore we came up with the following alternative for emailing backup success events:

It utilities a third party mail sending tool which you can specify remote email servers and authentication parameters 

http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/
http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/sendEmail-v156.zip

1: Setup your backup job and successfully run it at least once
2: Go to your event viewer and then "application and services logs"
3: Enter the "Microsoft" folder and then "Windows", "Backup" and select "Operational"
4: Find the successful backup log (It should have an event ID of 4) and then right click on it and select "Attach a task to this event"
5: Name the event (I leave it as the default name) and click "Next"
6: Because we're tying the task to an event the information will already by filled in for the second section, so click "next" again
7: On the action page, select "Start a program" and click "Next"
8: Extract the Send Email application at the top of this post to somewhere on the server and then browse to it and select it as the program to launch.
9: In the "Add Arguments" box enter the following details:
-f fromaddress@somewhere.co.uk -t toaddress@somewhereelse.co.uk -u FromName -m EmailSubject -s your.mailserver.co.uk -xu mailserveruser -xp mailserverpassword

Be sure to change the above for real values, a breakdown of the options are:

-f from address
-t to address
-u from name
-m email subject
-s mailserver
-xu mailserver username
-xp mailserver password

10: Click "Next" and then "Finish"

Your event task is now created - if you go to the task scheduler and select "Event Viewer Tasks" you should able to see it in there and even run it to check it works.

Works a treat - kudos to SendEmail team for lightweight app

Restoring a Windows Backup to a 2008 or Vista Virtual Machine when you can't use SCSI drivers. USB drive wouldn't offline

A local company had an unfortunate incident with their buildings power supply which managed to blow up their server. We had a good Windows Backup of it (2008 SBS) however the USB drive seemed a little iffy.

To get them back online ASAP we decided to restore the backup onto the replacement server as a virtual machine - they already had a spare 2008 R2 licence so we used this as the host OS.

When it came to trying to restore the backup, the external USB drive wouldn't offline - which meant that we couldn't mount it as a virtual drive in the guest. To get around this, we ended up cloning the USB drive to a VHD and then mounting this instead.

All good, except I then discovered that 2008 cannot mount the SCSI drive from the installation area. A lot of digging later I was still with a solution and running out of time.

Eventually, I hit upon the idea of doing it over the network instead (why it didn't come to me sooner I don't know!). So I removed the Virtual Network Adapted, added a Legacy Network Adapter so the guest installer could use it and then shared the VHD on the host which was then access by the guest over the network and restored.

9 hours later (!) and just in time for the next day of trading of the company the restore completed and the server was good to go after a few driver tweaks here and there.

Next time this happens I'll remember to ignore the SCSI option for anything older than Windows 7/2008 R2 and just use a legacy network driver and restore over the network immediately.

Sage 2015 Accounts backup errors - unable to connect to the sage data service

With a new Sage update comes some more sage bugs - and this one threw me totally. After fixing problems with the sage data service on a server a client was still receiving the following error when trying to backup their data:

"unable to connect to the sage data service"

This didn't make any sense, as we were logged into sage which meant the service was working.

Eventually, we tracked this down to a bug in the new sage update which meant that if you connect to your sage data using a mapped drive (s: for example as most of our clients do) the local sage wasn't able to talk to the data service on the server.

This solution? Simply edit your company file to use a UNC instead of a mapped drive:

So what was: S:

Became: //servername/sage

Problem solved!

Cannot Configure Backup Schedule - SBS 2008 2011 - the filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. Adding a new backup drive to an existing backup set

Naturally, we have a lot of clients who using Windows Backup with SBS - its a great little utility that comes with reporting. In some situations we have 8 tapes running in a grandfather, father, son rotation which span many months.

Annoyingly, if you try and add a new backup drive to the job and don't have all the original disks to hand you will often get an error message such as:

Cannot Configure Backup Schedule
or
the file name, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. Adding a new backup drive to an existing backup set

You can get around this by plugging in all the backup drives and adding the new one - but does anyone have THAT many USB ports on a server? and what if some of the drives are offsite/failed/etc?

The alternative is to use the command line backup utility called wbadmin (windows backup admin). Follow the below steps:

1: Open up a command line with administrative privileges
2: wbadmin /? for a list of options
3: Assuming you have a job already running and you want to add another disk, firstly we have to identify the disk in question. So plug it in and then when the system is ready, type wbadmin get disks
4: A list of all the disks will appear in the system - look for the new backup drive and then right click and select "mark"
5: Click and drag to highlight the disk identifier string and then press enter (you've now copied it into the clipboard)
6: Now type: wbadmin enable backup -addtarget:{identifierhere}
{identifiedhere} should be replaced with the string you just copied (right click, paste)
7: press enter and then select Y if you are prompted to overwrite

As usual when messing with backup disks and windows backup, double and triple check its the right disk before accepting!

And that should be it - keep an eye on on the screen after you add a disk as if the system doesn't think its big enough it will alert you.

Windows Black Screen of Death when you login on Administrator only account - no windows explorer shell visible until you kill the task and reopen in

A system was recently brought to me which had been badly infected with malware and other nasties. After much scanning and cleaning, the system was back in a usable state with one massive quirk:

Whenever an administrator logged onto the system the explorer shell wouldn't seem to launch - i'd just get a plain black screen. This was the case for all admin users, new or old.

On further investigation, there was an app running called "runonce", and when this was killed from the task manager the system booted correctly.

By checking the registry I found a left over key from all my cleaning work (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce) which was launching a piece of software to take control of Chrome.

With this key removed, all of the admin profiles starting logging in correctly again

So I hope that helps someone; had I checked the key in the first place I wouldn't have experienced this problem the first place.

PS.
Massive shout out to Malware Bytes Anti-Rootkit (https://www.malwarebytes.org/antirootkit/) - best root kit removal software I've used to date and it's only beta.

Virgin Media Superhub and VPNs

Following a migration to an upgraded speed package on a Virgin fibre connection a hardware VPN stopped working properly. The connection would connect, but only remain up for 40 seconds and during this time very little data would transfer across it properly

On further inspection, even though we had public IPs hitting the equipment behind the superhub, the superhub itself was still interfering with data. 

To resolve this issue, you need to turn off the super-hub firewall (only recommended if you have another firewall behind it like we do) and then also go to the security settings and enable the VPN pass-through options.

Once this was done, the data was free to move correctly and the VPN no longer disconnected.

Usually this sort if thing gets checked, but if I have a public IP assigned to equipment behind the superhub I wouldn't expect it to ever play with the data its passing through.

We live and learn.

-- Update --

The above seem was originally written for a Super Hub 1 but since writing this I've also had to use it to resolve issues with software VPNs and Superhub 2s. The below steps to sort this on a SH2 are:

1. Log into the Superhub (default IP is 192.168.0.1)
2. Enter your username and password (this is generally on the bottom of the router)
3. Go to Advanced Settings (at the bottom of the page).
4. Go to (Security) "Firewall".
5. Uncheck all boxes except "PPTP Pass-Through" – if PPTP Pass through is not checked, please check it.
6. Click Apply

Weight Loss - My Journey

I rarely have a great deal to say to people; most of the posts on this blog are the ramblings of someone talking to no-one in particular which is exactly what this post is going to be about. However, unlike the normal tech posts this is about a personal issue that I've finally dealt with.

Today, for the first time in probably 20 years i'm what the NHS would consider 'normal'. Not Obese, not overweight, merely normal.

When I started trying to lose weight I was 138kg (21st 10lbs, a BMI of 41.6)

Fast forward 9 months and I'm now 82.7kg (13st, a BMI of 25 exactly). 

That's a loss of 55.3kg (8st 10lbs) or very nearly a third of my body weight.

What does this mean in terms in size?

• I started off as a 46 inch waist (which I wore below by stomach) and i'm now a 34 inch waist when worn over my stomach
• I've dropped 2 shoe sizes
• In a t-shirt I've gone from an XXL to a S/M depending on where it's from
• Jackets, from an XXL to a S/M again depending on where its from
• Aircraft seat-belts now fit and I no longer worry about needing an extension
• None of the clothes I had 9 months ago fit anymore

Things I didn't expect

• I get cold; where as before my excess fat was keeping me insulated I now get cold very easily and have to wear more layers to compensate
• I'm more fragile; if I knock myself the force hits my bones and is not absorbed by my fat layers anymore and is much more painful
• Seats are often less comfy; because again, more pressure on my bones without that insulating layer of fat to take off the edge
• More people talk to me when i'm out and about; it really does seem that a LOT of people in this country judge based on size
• Re-buying a whole wardrobe is expensive

How did it happen?

Exactly how you would expect:

• Ate less
• In all honest I probably ate to little as often I was on sub-1000 calories a day but I still had breakfast, lunch and dinner with a desert in the evenings
• Exercised more
• Started off as 15 minutes on the exercise bike
• Moved on to 30 minutes on the cross trainer
• Then 40 minutes Zumba on the Wii
• Now its a 1 to 2 hour walk every evening instead
• 45m swimming every week
• Found food I could enjoy and can continue to eat (thank you Hairy Dieters)
• If I had to go to somewhere like McDonalds I'd swap fries for a salad and have the lowest calorie burger available.
• Was still able to have fish and chips every weekend (and have done so since March!), the full swimming session would make up for it.
• Smart Scales (weighing myself daily, seeing the difference and logging it automatically really helped me)

What Now?

Weight maintenance - when I started this it was a change for life therefore even though I've finished losing weight I won't be going back to my old ways. That doesn't mean I can't have a McDonalds if I fancy it, but I have to question whether I really need fries with that. As for Lattes, black coffee (no sugar!) is the way I drank it and will now continue to drink it. These sort of choices are the ones that seem to have made the difference to me; Little big changes which i'm now going to stay with.

Cliche pictures