Alexander’s Blog

Have you run into a situation where your users are getting an unexpected login prompt? If your Outlook 2007 users are configured to use NTLM authentication yet they are receiving a login prompt, which they shouldn’t, you need to modify Outlook Anywhere settings for the Autodiscover service. More specifically, you need to use the Exchange Management Shell and modify a server-side setting for Outlook Anywhere. This should be done on the server that is running the Client Access server role. For the Autodiscover service, you should set the value for the Server attribute for the EXPR OutlookProvider object to $null for the Outlook Anywhere configuration settings. Here’s how.

Make sure you have the proper permissions to modify the settings on the Exchange 2007 Server. For example logon as an account that has the Exchange Organization Administrator role. Start the Exchange Management Shell and run the following command:

Set-OutlookProvider EXPR -Server $null

In order for the changes to take effect, you should either restart Internet Information Services (IIS) or recycle MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool on the Exchange server that’s running the Client Access server role.

Restarting IIS is simple but if you decide to recycle MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool, you need to go to Application Pools container in the IIS console. Right-click MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool and select Recycle. You will not expect any messages confirming your action but the application pool will get recycled. If you have any doubts whether the recycling of the application pool took place then you can restart IIS instead, which will also accomplish the same thing.

Check out these MSDN Virtual Labs and TechNet Virtual Labs if you haven’t already. These are a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less. The best part is these labs don’t require any installation and are available to you immediately for FREE. Here are the topics that are currently available to you.

MSDN Virtual Labs

ASP.NET 2.0
ASP.NET
BizTalk Server
Commerce Server
Fritz Onion’s Intro to ASP.NET
Internet Information Services (IIS)
JPlusN (J+N)
Microsoft Expression
.NET Framework 3.0
Soup to Nuts
Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Team System
Visual C#
Visual J#
Visual Basic
Visual C++
Connected Systems
Data Access and Storage
Office
Security
Smart Client
SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 Upgrade
Visual SourceSafe
Web Services
Windows Embedded CE 6.0
Windows Live
Windows Mobile
Windows Vista
Windows XP Embedded
TechNet Virtual Labs

TechNet Virtual Labs

Antigen
BizTalk Server
Configuration Manager
Enterprise Search
Exchange Server
Forefront Security
Groove Server
Identity Integration Server (MIIS)
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server
Office Communications Server
Office System
Operations Manager
SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2000
SharePoint Server
Systems Management Server (SMS)
Windows Mobile
Windows Rights Management Services (RMS)
Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows Server 2008
Windows SharePoint Services
Windows Small Business Server
Windows Vista

Can’t edit a Web site on a 64-bit Windows Server 2003 using Microsoft Expression Web (EW)? Microsoft has replaced FrontPage with EW. Many administrators who were running FrontPage server extensions on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 and have now switched to 64-bit Windows Server 2003 are running into a problem when they try to setup their Web sites and edit it in FrontPage. Microsoft no longer supports FrontPage server extensions on a 64-bit Windows Server 2003 so you can’t use FrontPage to edit Web sites on a 64-bit Windows Server.

Well, here are 3 basic steps that you need to take to edit a Web site using EW on a 64-bit Windows Server 2003.

1. In IIS 6.0, go to the Properties of the Web site and make sure that on the Directory Security tab both Anonymous users and Integrated Authentication is selected.
2. On the Home Directory tab, check the boxes for Read, Write, and Directory Browsing. This is required for WebDAV.
3. In IIS Manager, under Web Service Extensions, enable WebDAV extension.

You should now be able to edit your site with an account that has appropriate permissions.

By default Internet Information Services (IIS) is installed in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot folder. For security reasons, you should move it to another location, such as a different drive or partition. During installation you are not given the option to move IIS folders to a new location. However, there are a couple of ways of moving IIS to a different location. The first method is not suitable in all cases but is rather simple. The second method is the recommended method because it will update the registry entries appropriately.

METHOD 1
You can create a new folder on a different drive, e.g. E:\MyWebFiles and move all your files there. In IIS Manager simply point to the new location. This method will work for basic HTML code but has its limitation and is not appropriate for all Web sites.

METHOD 2
This is the recommended method. Create an unattend.txt file which will be used to install IIS. For more information on unattended installation of IIS, check out How To Perform an Unattended Installation of IIS 6.0.

Essentially, you need to point to the new path in the unattend.txt file.

[InternetServer]
PathFTPRoot=D:\Inetpub\NewFTProot
PathWWWRoot=D:\Inetpub\NewWWroot

For more information on configuring how to use the unattend.txt file check out the KB article How to Change the Default Installation Paths for FTP and the Web.

One of the major development features that didn’t make it from Windows 2000 to Windows XP was the ability to host multiple virtual Web servers on a single machine. Essentially, Microsoft disabled (hid) the menu item in the IIS Management Console that allows you create a new virtual server.

Steven M. Cohn describes an alternative way of creating multiple virtual servers in Windows XP Pro in his blog. He shows you how the feature is only hidden, not stripped out completely. While you cannot create a new virtual server through the MMC, you can still use the administrative scripts that come with IIS, specifically, the adsutil.vbs script.

According to Steven, the caveat in this whole thing is that while you can create multiple virtual Web servers on a single Windows XP Pro machine, you can only run one at a time. Even applying a unique port number to each virtual server doesn’t seem to work. But it’s not so bad…all you have to do is open the IIS MMC, stop the currently running virtual server and start the one you want. You can read the entire article posted in his blog.

You can also download a free graphical tool called IIS Admin. The tool allows you to create multiple Web sites on Windows XP Professional and easily switch between them.

Yet another method is to use an ISAPI filter which runs at the root, interrogates the host header of the incoming HTTP request and on the outcome of that redirects the request to the relevant place in the file system. Click here for more details.