Category Archives: Windows Servers

Anything related to Windows servers

Windows Recovery Console Admin Password

Trying to launch the Recovery Console from the Windows Server disk gave me a bit more trouble than I expected this morning.

The issue I think arises from the initial setup of a server being done with a basic password and then the server is promoted into a domain controller role and gets effectively another password for the Administrator account. The user will use the Administrator password and ‘knows’ that the password is correct, but when entering this password at the Recovery Console login gets an invalid password message and after 3 attempts the computer logs out and restarts.

The issue is that the Directory Service Restore Mode Administrator password is still the original old administrator password from years ago when the server was first installed.

The solution is well documented at the Petri IT Knowledgebase which is where I sourced the correct commands for changing the password.

If you have a server that you cannot boot then this will not help as you need access to the GUI to do this. I have not tried but you may get some success by using a password clearing utility along the lines of my recent experience with my Windows 7 netbook and earlier Windows XP password lockouts.

SugarCRM web.config IIS7 and Error 500: Internal Server Error

I’d started to deploy a test version of SugarCRM 5.5 CE and an updated PHP 5.2.12 to a Windows 2008 server with IIS7 when I got an internal server error 500.

What I found, eventually, was that while the installation of Sugar completed, the installation creates a web.config file that includes an instruction to ‘Add default document type’ of index.php to the site.

The problem was that my server level settings already included index.php as a default document. The only reason I found it was when checking all the settings for the site in the IIS7 Manager it gives an error in the manager about the double up not being possible.

Would have been more polite if IIS could simply accept that the index.php already is a default document and ignore it politely instead of doing a dummy spit type error and not running.

In this case I just deleted the instruction to Add in the web.config.

Another option is to include a instruction in the web.config to clear any existing default pages prior to adding the one(s) required for the current application. Like this:

Logged as a Bug at Sugar BugTracker

SugarCRM 5.5 Install Error Session Save Path

Using a PHP setup on a Windows 2008 server as per the FastCGI instruction set I found that installing Sugar 5.5 stopped at the SystemCheck page (install/installSystemCheck.php) with a message that the message

The session.save_path setting in your php configuration file (php.ini) is not set or is set to a folder which did not exist. You might need to set the save_path setting in php.ini or verify that the folder sets in save_path exist.

The general comments on searching for ideas were that the is_dir function fails regardless of the existence or otherwise of the directory.

I delved a bit deeper and confirmed that the is_dir function is restricted by the openbase_dir setting and if the session.save_path is outside the openbase_dir setting then it is not found.

I also noted that the php chdir function is limited to the openbase_dir setting.

Using multiple values in the openbase_dir setting does not work either as apparently is_dir ignores the secondary setting.

In any case the only way around this is appears to be to have the session.save_path within the openbase_dir path.

Mindjet MindManager and Sharepoint

Notes on modifications to get Sharepoint to recognise MindMap file types

http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/mindmanager.aspx

gives these instructions but the paths were not the same for my SharePoint 2007 installation. So I modified these instructions as:

Server Configuration:

Open the file
Local_Drive:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12TEMPLATEXMLDocIcon.xml

Add the following line within the ByExtension element in DocIcon.xml:

Save DocIcon.xml

Copy the file MindManager.gif to the
Local_Drive:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12TEMPLATEIMAGES directory
See note below on how to get the MindManager.gif file

Add the following MIME type to IIS using the IIS Manager (Select Mime Types -> Add)

Extension: .mmp .mmap .mmpt .mmat .mmmp .mmas
MIME type: application/vnd.mindjet.mindmanager

MindManager Icon

The icon file for MindManager in V8 includes a variety of sizes of icons. The default is 48px square while 16px square is really what we want for a standard Sharepoint file listing.

So I used IconFX to extract the 16px icon as a .gif file and used that instead.

MindMap v8 Icon gif file

MindMap 8 Icon

Finally

Issue an iisreset on the Sharepoint web server to get the new config uploaded.