Outlook 2010 prompting for credentials in 2018

Well some weird behaviour going on now.

Outlook 2010 prompting for credentials when connecting to Exchange 2016..

After a load of testing and MS involvement

We have been operating on the expectation that the December cumulative update of Windows 10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4053578/windows-10-update-kb4053578 has an issue introduced to create an auth prompt in the OAB download in Outlook as it uses the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
Testing showed on several computers that the installation of December or the January update https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4056888/windows-10-update-kb4056888 triggers the prompt

So these hotfixes appear to be causing the issue. 

Before you spend hours troubleshooting Exchange like we did, check those hotfixes.

For the moment I think we're going to disable the BITS service.

Exchange 2016 CU6

If your activesync is breaking then install Exchange 2016 CU6

It also does need a schema update despite what they say so if you don't have perms you'll get the error about mailbox not isntalled, schema is not up to date, account not a member of org admins.

Blah blah blah.. Sloppy..

The mysterious case of the missing VSS System Writer - fixed..

I am taking the time to blog this as after extensive googling for solutions, none of them worked and was nothing else for it but to troubleshoot till I finally got to the answer.. Read on Macduff..

So we had a Windows 2008 server (not R2) which upon running "vssadmin list writers" simply did not show the System Writer.. The backup team were complaining and needed it fixed.. Obviously 1st port of call was to research online and we tried all of that.. We re-registered the VSS writers, we reset the permissions as per here

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/f4c7fb5b-162a-4c75-994c-b75fbd1dece7/vss-system-writer-is-missing

We also looked at removing the number of temp files in the asp temp directories which was also identified as an issue.. None of this worked.. Stubborn mule that it was.

So at this point, we really had exhausted every online solution available and none worked.

The application event log was continuing to Event ID 8193

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine CreateVssExamineWriterMetadata.  hr = 0x80042311.

 

Operation:

   Writer Exposing its Metadata

 

Context:

   Execution Context: Requestor

   Writer Instance ID: {83225E56-CD56-4FF3-93B6-E54CE9D3F44A}

   Writer Class Id: {E8132975-6F93-4464-A53E-1050253AE220}

   Writer Name: System Writer

 

And Event ID 8228

Fail to parse XML file.

Reason An invalid character was found in text content.

 

Line 0x00000174

Position 0x00000013

Errorcode 0xc00ce508

So as calling Microsoft was not an option, we installed the VSS SDK kit which has some excellent troubleshooting tools and creates some very handy dumps of the VSS service when it makes its calls.

So with diagnostics enabled, and logging in place, I again ran the fabled 'vssadmin list writers'...

Once the dump was complete, I was able to see this nugget in the log.

[0074504171,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] EXIT  {CVssSafeCriticalSection::Init}: hr: 0x00000000

[0074504171,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] ENTER {CVssExamineWriterMetadata::LoadDocument}:

[0074504203,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] ENTER {CXMLDocument::LoadFromXML}:

[0074504203,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] ENTER {CXMLDocument::Initialize}:

[0074504203,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] EXIT  {CXMLDocument::Initialize}: hr: 0x00000000

[0074504312,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] backupext\vsxml\vs_xml.cxx(0815): CXMLDocument::LoadFromXML: XML parse fails, error code 0xc00ce508, line 372 char 19, reason: An invalid character was found in text content.

 

[0074504312,0x001248:0x0f30:0x1818a12e] backupext\vsxml\vs_xml.cxx(0817): CXMLDocument::LoadFromXML: XML parse fails, Problem text: ilespec="mfcom.exe" filespecBackupType="3855"/>

Tucked away in the registry was an invalid path to a service which had been uninstalled at some point but never fully flushed from the registry..

Check out that illegal path filename.. :-(

As the path was invalid anyway, I removed the offending service entry from the registry, and lo and behold, the VSS System Writer sprang into life, appearing back as it should be.

So top tips learnt, use the VSS SDK kit to get diagnostics asap and the solution will hopefully reveal itself a lot quicker than it did to me.. Glad to say got there in the end though :-)

I've stuffed my ankle and am out for 4 weeks.. nightmare.

Windows Live Messenger 14.0 crashes during Launch

Think this is worth highlighting as I was suffering from this big time but it's all fixed in this post from Microsoft.

http://windowslivehelp.com/solution.aspx?solutionid=17e5dddf-4156-4725-a1a5-f3a10a76e12f

S.

windows 7 msn messenger Error 81000306

Lovely windows 7, after the bloat of Vista. All working fine except for MSN Messenger. Could not sign in for the life of me.. All I got was

Error 81000306

No errors reported in the troubleshooter.

I finally found a nugget in google.

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Run that in an elevated CMD box and voila, MSN Messenger works..

Must be a combination of my hardware as I cannot see Jo Public having to do that to log into MSN Messenger.

As a courtest CMD comment, to return to normal it is

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Legato Networker and the c:\temp saga

We came across a strange issue recently with Legato Networker where if you initiated a backup from the Legato server itself, version 7.3 SP4, then it would back everything up except c:\temp

When we looked from the client end (, and tried a restore, we could see c:\temp but the restore contents was empty. No directives in place and no nsr.dir exclusions in place.

Went through google but nothing obvious came to light. was not a DFS mount point, NTFS security was fine, and strangely enough when we initiated a backup from the client side, then c:\temp was backed up....

After some hours searching, we applied some lateral thinking and checking several other boxes on differnet backup servers.

All the same, c:\temp was always empty.....

At which point we got EMC on the phone, the transcript is below.. All I can say is don't keep anything in c:\temp and expect to be able to restore it ! It's a known bug with no fix...

I hope google may catalogue this post so other users may find it easier to diagnose this use quicker than we did !

S.

Details
System: "Welcome to the EMC Customer Support Center."
System: "We will be with you in just a moment."
Session Started
us@us.com: "folder excluded from backups"
System: "The Service Request number for your inquiry is 3254xxx."
EMC :"Thank you for contacting EMC Customer Service. My name is "
us@us.com: "Hi "
EMC :"Hi"
us@us.com: "just a quick question about a backup of a windows client"
EMC :"sure"
us@us.com: "I can see our backups are miising c:\temp"
EMC :"ok"
us@us.com: "this appears to be intentional as all the clients are the same"
EMC :"what is the saveset mentioned"
us@us.com: "this is not done by a directive or a nsr.dir exclusion list"
us@us.com: "saveset is C:\"
EMC :"ok"
us@us.com: "client is set for filesystems = all"
EMC :"have you enabled any directive to skip"
us@us.com: "no the orginal directive was set so skip *.dbf"
EMC :"ok"
us@us.com: "I have now set an empty directive so nothing should be excluded"
EMC :"yes"
us@us.com: "but C:\temp is still missed"
us@us.com: "what causes this?"
EMC :"ok"
us@us.com: "can it be turned off>"
EMC :"one moment"
us@us.com: "thanks"
EMC :"have you tried by giving saveset C:\temp"
us@us.com: "yes, this was what i was doing in testing"
EMC :"or just open networker user"
EMC :"and than click on backup it will list all files and folders"
EMC :"whether temp folder is visible there"
EMC :"if it is not visible it will not backup"
us@us.com: "that is the really strange thing. a client initiated backup will work okay. but when you do a server initiated backup it fails AND it removes the CFI for the earlier backup"
EMC :"ok"
EMC :"normally it will skip temp folder"
us@us.com: "yes"
EMC :"have you tried client initiated backup"
EMC :"and it has backup temp folder"
us@us.com: "yes"
EMC :"ok"
us@us.com: "see comment at 14:28:08"
EMC :"when you initiate backup from server that will not take tmep folder it will skip"
us@us.com: "that's right"
EMC :"its know issue"
us@us.com: "okay"
us@us.com: "so is it missed because there is a problem, or because EMC want it to work that way??"
us@us.com: "is there a fix?"
EMC :"there is no fix for this as of now"
us@us.com: "okay. at least I know my config is good."
us@us.com: "thanks for your help"
us@us.com: "have a good day"
EMC :"yes its good"
EMC :"welcome"
EMC :"Thanks again for contacting EMC Support."
us@us.com: "thank you"
us@us.com: "bye"
Session Ended