Windows 10 appearing to briefly lose connection when using a mapped drive

A clients office has recently started to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7

They've been running a couple of machines with 10 to check all works OK with their software. The machines which were upgraded started to develop a strange fault; Windows would report that the connection to the mapped drives had dropped

At face value it looked like the problem was that the network had a fault, potentially a failing switch, NIC or cable but the problem persisted after changing ports and switches.

Fast forward through more investigation and the problem was eventually tracked down to how the mapped drive was being made using Group Policy

For some reason, if the drive is mapped using the CREATE option then Windows 10 appears to drop the mapped drive connection (for only a brief moment) to re-create it again. The Windows 7 PCs don't seem to mind this and it doesn't cause any problems

The resolution was simply to change the mapping from CREATE to UPDATE and the problem was solved

Installing Sage Accounts 2010 on Windows 10

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to install Sage Accounts 2010 then you'll probably see that installing it isn't as easy as you may think. When you run the installation, Windows 10 will stop it and not let you install.

Right click on the installer and select "Run as Administrator" I hear you cry! Alas, that won't work either.

Disable UAC? Nope

To get around it, run a command prompt as an administrator and then launch the installation from here - problem solved

You may also find that updates won't automatically download - in which case you'll need to log into the Sage website and download them manually. Use the above process again to run the updates

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) The namespace \root\microsoft\bits doesn't exist on the server RTS.

Recently we've been converting a number of physical machines to virtual ones - and to help the process we've been using the MVMC wizard.

One of the error messages that we often see is:

The namespace \root\Microsoft\bits doesn't exist on the server RTS.

Why? Because I always forget to install the BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) feature before I start! 

So to fix this error, simply install this as a feature making sure to select the compact server as an option and it should resolve it for you

HP ML10 Gen9 Network Drivers for Server 2012 R2 - ven_8086&dev_15b7&rev_31

Had a total nightmare finding drivers for this server - none of the ones on the HP website support it and when you try and get them from Intel there aren't any.

So if you need the drivers for the NIC with a hardware ID of ven_8086&dev_15b7 rev_31 , give the below a go:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23073/Intel-Network-Adapter-Driver-for-Windows-Server-2012-R2-

Sage v24 Dataservice on SBS 2011 Server (missing sg50SdoEngine240.dll)

The new version of sage does not play nicely with SBS 2011 - when you run the installer for the data service it eventually gets to a point where it says your operating system isn't support (seriously Sage, what the hell?)

To get around this you have to install all of the components and prerequisites manually. Luckily, when you attempt to install the data service Sage leaves all of the installation files lying around in your user temp folder (%temp% at the run prompt and go to "Sage Accounts")

Once in there, you can go into the redist folder and ensure all are installed - if you run into error 0x80240017 whilst installing the dot net framework 4.6 (NDP46-KB3045557-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe) then you most likely need to install SP1 on your server (see here)

Once done, you can then go into the packages folder in the same location and run Sage50Accounts_DataAccess.msi (you don't need the ODBC one for just the data service).

If that installs - congrats!

However, If like me you receive more error messages about certain dll files not being registered (sg50SdoEngine240.dll in my case) and the services not starting, I had to re-run vc_redist.2015.x86.exe and perform a repair (this seemed to install with SP1, but the system really didn't like it) - this then let the software finally install.

Sage really need to sort stuff like this out, if they cant get the basics down then good luck to the people using the actual software.

Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 ERROR code 0x80240017 - SBS Sage Data Service v24

The recent sage update requires a new data service to be installed - it doesn't like SBS very much and I will be making another post about this but if you're trying to installed the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015  update and you receive error code 0x80240017 the first thing you should check is if SP1 is installed!

Creating a Wildcard Certificate in IIS and SBS 2011

I like to make certificate requets in IIS - its a bit more universal than using the SBS console. The below steps explain how to create a certificate request in IIS and then how to import that certificate into the SBS console to use on an SBS 2011 domain.

1. Open Internet Information Server (IIS)
2. Go to the server node (if your server is called "SBS" it would be the one that says "SBS" with your domain and username after it
3. In the main window scroll down to the section entitiled "IIS", find "Server Certificates" and then double click it
4. In the new section, click "Create Certificate Request" on the right hand side
5. Fill in your information
    a. Common name is the name of the domain you're securing, if you're having a wildcard certificate the common name should start *. (so *.microsoft.com for example)
    b. Organisation is the companys name who will own the certificate
    c. Organisation Unit is for the company department, we usually just use "IT"
    d. City/local/state/country are where the company is based
6. Click Next
7. Generally, most certificate authoritise will want your bit length to be 2048 (not always the case!) if so, change this
8. At this point, I would storngly recommend clicking the ... so you can save the request file somewhere useful rather than just giving it a name
9. Click finish and you will now have your CSR file ready to purchase a certificate
10. Copy the contents of the CSR file and then go to your certificate provider and follow the wizard.
11. When requested to enter your CSR, paste it into the window
12. On the next page, the CSR should then tell you the domain name its securing - at this point double and triple check its correct!
13. Gernally, an email will be sent to one of the domain contacts which you will need to act on to complete the certificate (I usually use postmaster@)
14. Once the certificate has been created it will be sent to you
15. Go back to IIS on the server and on the same menu on the right select "Complete Certificate Request"
16. Select the file taht your certificate authoristy have sent you (if they havent sent a file and just sent a plaintext response, simply save this into a text document then select that instead) and give it a friendly name (something you can reconize it by) and click OK
17. The certificate is now installed on your server and can be used as needed

(if adding to SBS 2011)
18. Go to the SBS console
19. Go to the "Network" button and select the "Connectivity" tab
20. Select " Add a trusted certificate" on the right hand side
21. Click "Next" and then select "I want to use a certificate that is already insatlled on the server"
22. Select the new certificate from the list and follow the wizard through

Certificate not appearing in the list in the SBS Wizard? Are you defintely sure the "Internet Address" is set to the same domain you've registed for the certificate?