tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68149442221505178322024-03-13T20:53:47.471+00:00LumbGapsYou will find on this blog a number of solutions and questions to bizarre IT systems admin issues as and when I come across them. If the solutions are already widely available my intention is that you won't find them here. For more information about me and the IT sector in which I work please see my profile. If you would like to contact me with any questions please respond to my blog entries or drop me an email.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-76705257669357307422012-11-30T11:38:00.000+00:002012-11-30T11:38:37.423+00:00Citrix XenApp Publishing Windows ExplorerWe are in the process of upgrading our Citrix farm from XenApp 5 on Windows 2003 to XenApp 6.5. One of our requirements was to publish a seemless windows version of Explorer. In Windows 2003 this was easy, but since Microsoft decoupled explorer from IE and now whenever explorer.exe is called, the launched instance now exits and opens a new instance two problems occur.<br />
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1. The XenApp AppCenter does not think the launched application is working anymore so you do not see information under connected users<br />
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2. As soon as the session starts, it closes down again unless another process is holding it open!<br />
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There are many solutions to this availble, but none quite did the trick for me as all the ones I tried had limitations.<br />
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With a combination of a batch file, sleep.exe and hstart.exe I was able to not only get the session to stay alive while explorer was running, but also show the correct info in the AppCenter and logoff correctly when explorer was closed.<br />
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The published application should look like this:<br />
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<em>%path%\hstart64.exe /NOCONSOLE %path%\ExplorerStart.bat</em><br />
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The batch file looks like this:<br />
<br />
<em>@echo off</em><br />
<em>ECHO Starting explorer</em><br />
<em>C:\Windows\explorer.exe</em><br />
<em>:LOOP</em><br />
<em>ECHO Checking for explorer.exe</em><br />
<em>TASKLIST /FI "USERNAME eq %userdomain%\%username%" /FI "Imagename eq explorer.exe" > %temp%\explorercheck.txt</em><br />
<em>ECHO Sleeping for 30 seconds</em><br />
<em>%path%\sleep.exe 30</em><br />
<em>set folder=%temp%\explorercheck.txt</em><br />
<em>for /f "eol=: tokens=3 delims= " %%a in ('find "explorer.exe" %folder%') do (<br /> GOTO LOOP<br />)</em><br />
<em>ECHO Explorer not found so deleting text file and exiting</em><br />
<em>del %temp%\explorercheck.txt </em><br />
<em>exit</em><br />
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I imagine there are more elegant ways of writing the batch file, but this works nicely for me.<br />
<br />
%path% needs to be substituted for a real path in three locations.<br />
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Hope this saves someone a bit of time.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-74050376276906725572012-04-12T15:03:00.004+00:002012-04-12T15:12:23.231+00:00AppV Unload All AppsI have been having an issue where AppV is writing absolutely loads of temporary files in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Application Virtualization Client\SoftGrid Client\AppFS Storage. In fact I had >6000 temporary files for each every application on my RDSH servers - two files are created for each and every user who loads the application, each and every time they logon to the server (as I use mandatory profiles). This soon starts to chew up even large system drives. None of the normal methods of clearing the AppV cache empty this area. In fact the only command I found that did was SFTMIME /UNLOAD. Granted you could write a script to manually delete these files, but I wanted to use a supported method.<br /><br />Using SFTMIME to unload all the apps turned out to be easier said than done due to the number of parameters that need to be sent and all the annoying spaces in file paths and application names. Anyway I wrote a really convuluted process which works great and thought I would share.<br /><br /><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13464150/UnloadAppVCache.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13464150/UnloadAppVCache.zip</a>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-47392280648788575362010-06-16T09:00:00.004+00:002010-06-16T10:05:01.288+00:00Show Control Panel in Start Menu using Registry<span style="font-family:arial;">If you are using roaming profiles, or even better mandatory profiles, you can set the Control Panel to appear or not appear in the Start menu for all users by editing the following registry key in the NTUser hive:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Start_ShowControlPanel</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">1 = Show Link</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">0 = Hide</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">We use Appsense to set this key on logon for specific users on specific servers.</span>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-43741822302622936592010-03-16T13:39:00.015+00:002010-03-17T14:43:01.294+00:00Changing the Primary Domain DNS name of this computer to "" failed.We have been hitting an error when adding Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 machines to our Windows 2003 domain, specifically:<br /><div></div><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/S5-KxLhp_tI/AAAAAAAAACA/MQVi7UfVeSo/s1600-h/2010-02-22_0928_001.png"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 140px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449226651653766866" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/S5-KxLhp_tI/AAAAAAAAACA/MQVi7UfVeSo/s320/2010-02-22_0928_001.png" /></a><br /></div><div><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/S5-Kb4BBIcI/AAAAAAAAAB4/DOIeYdaP594/s1600-h/2010-02-22_0928.png"></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>.</div><div>.</div><div>.</div><div>.</div><div>This issue does not affect older versions of Windows and does not appear to stop the computer from successfully joining the domain. I looked into the c:\windows\debug\netsetup.log and found the Windows 7/2008 R2 perform an additional number of steps at the end of the domain join, things that previous OS versions have not done and the following error is shown:</div><div> </div><div>NetpLdapBin:ldap_bind failed <em>Server</em>:81: Server Down</div><div> </div><div>I am yet to discover exactly what these additional steps do, but it was easy to spot the problem. Throughout the domain join the server contacts the domain controllers using the DC FQDNs. In this last section it attempts to contact the domain controllers using the netbios name, which fails as we do not apply domain suffixes to our servers and workstations using DHCP - we use the standard DNS devolution and setting to apply parent DNS names. If you do use DHCP to apply DNS suffixes you more than likely will not see this issue. If you don't you can work around the issue by adding a manual DNS suffix for your domain before your domain join and then remove it again afterwards (this is how we are working around it for now). Or you could just ignore it as I cannot find any negative side affects.</div><div></div><div>Microsoft have confirmed this as a bug in Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 but have not yet committed to a fix date as they see it as low priority (as it does not break anything). I have requested a KB number from MS, which I will post ASAP.</div>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-40182684959827980452010-02-18T08:19:00.003+00:002010-02-18T09:24:17.720+00:00Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.There are loads of blog entries about this error and numerous causes. It could be that autodiscovery is not working correctly, that the OOF URL is configured incorrectly, permissions are wrong on the CAS servers etc.... I'm not going to go into detail here as there are loads of blogs and articles about this. <br /><br />Our situation was slightly different to anything I could find. OOF works just fine for our users, however as Exchange administrators we could not set other users OOF when using Outlook 2007, we got the error "...the server is unavailable...". We also found that we were unable to login to other users mailboxes using our Exchange admins accounts using OWA, which was the other way we used to set OOF for absent users. The only way we could still set OOF for end users was to use Outlook 2003, but this is no longer supported on our campus, so we needed another way. This prompted me to get to the bottom of this problem, so we as system admins could again easily set end users OOF.<br /><br />The one thing that was obvious is that this was a problem that only happened when connecting via the CAS servers. We could login to mailboxes just fine using MAPI. Therefore there had to be something different about the way the CAS servers authenticate users against mailboxes. It is worth mentioning at this point that we had confirmed that our admin accounts were listed as having Full Mailbox Access to all mailboxes in ESM. We soon discovered that the server is unavailable error is a generic error and happens regardless of what error is actually returned by the server. Having tried the URL of the OOF within IE we saw that it was actually an access denied error that was being returned by the CAS server, not a service unavailable error. We were stumpted as our admin accounts had full access!<br /><br />With some testing I noticed that some of our several thousand mailboxes did allow us to set OOF as admins, but the vast majority did not. The question was why. I then started playing with Full Access permissions and found that any change whatsoever to the Full Access permissions using ESM or the shell suddenly made OOF work for our admin accounts. This is where Microsoft came in as I was stumpted. It turned out that this is apparantly an expected issue that Microsoft have documented very poorly. It is a result of the split permissions model in Exchange 2007. When connecting to a mailbox using a CAS server (as OOF does in Outlook 2007), the CAS server reads the MSExchangesecurityDescriptor from AD. By default this is truncated and incomplete. To cut a long story short, Microsoft no longer support automatically inherited AD permissions to mailboxes, although you will see the permissions using ESM and they will work using MAPI connections. I find this utterly baffling, but it is what it is. In order to resolve this you need to make a change to the mailbox permissions using the shell or ESM. This causes Exchange to rewrite the MSExchangeSecurityDescriptor in AD and suddenly everything works. A couple of methods and further info:<br /><br />add-mailboxPermission -identity <admin> -accessrights:fullaccess<br /><br />get-mailbox -server <exchservername> Add-MailboxPermission -User <admin> -AccessRights FullAccess<br /><br /><a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996343(EXCHG.80).aspx">http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996343(EXCHG.80).aspx</a><br /><br /><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310866">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310866</a>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-30580127597514008702009-08-28T13:28:00.003+00:002009-08-28T13:43:20.670+00:00MapiExceptionNotAuthorized in Exchange 2007I thought I would share with everyone an issue we had with mail delivery to Public Folders in Exchange 2007. We were receiving the following error:<br /><br />#550 5.2.0 STOREDRV.Deliver: The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service reported an error. The following information should help identify the cause of this error: "MapiExceptionNotAuthorized....<br /><br />This happened for some staff, but others could deliver messages just fine. Also external users i.e. Hotmail could deliver messages to the PFs without issue. <br /><br />You would imagine then there must be a deny rule somewhere for a specific group of staff, or there was something wrong with the permissions on the PF. Numerous tests and checks proved this to not be the case. <br /><br />Fortunately a pattern started to emerge with the people having the problem i.e. they were all in the same faculty and members of specific groups. Further testing proved that if a user was a member of a few groups their messages/emails would be denied to ALL PFs. However the groups were not mentioned anywhere in the PF permissions. <br /><br />We even created new mail enabled PFs and gave everyone full control with no denies... still no luck. After a bit more thinking we figured that it must be that Exchange is having trouble reading the group membersip. We soon found that the OUs containing the problem groups of which the problem users were members, had inheritance switched off and hence had not picked up the new Exchange 2007 permissions when we installed EX2007. They still allowed the old Exchange Enterprise Servers group acccess which worked for EX2003, but no access was in place for the EX2007 Exchange Servers group. The OUs had also had read permissions removed for Pre-Windows 2000 (Everyone) and Authenticated Users. Therefore Exchange was denying the user access as it could not fully recurse the users ACLs. I guess this is secure by default in action, although it seems like a bit of an inefficient design to me.<br /><br />I hope this saves someone a bit of time as it took us ages to get to the bottom of it.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-37784959928247927842009-08-05T08:09:00.003+00:002009-08-05T08:22:12.680+00:00Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access Old PasswordsWeird one yesterday. We had a customer who had fallen foul of a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">phishing</span> email and entered their <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">username</span> and password in a web form. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Surprise</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">surprise</span> their account was compromised and used for sending a huge amount of SPAM. As soon as we became aware of the problem the user changed their password. Because the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">spammer</span> had already established a connection as this user the password change did not affect them and they carried on. No major <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">surprises</span> there. We had to lapse the account (disable) for the connection to be dropped (I wish Microsoft would provide a tool for checking/closing active <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">OWA</span>/<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">IMAP</span> sessions in Exchange). The <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">surprise</span> came when we found the user could continue to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">login</span> to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">OWA</span>/<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">IMAP</span> using their old password, although it could not be used for any other resources. With some investigation it seems that once a user has authenticated to a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">CAS</span> server with a password, as long as the connection remains active (and for some time after) the old password can still be used to authenticate (open new connections) to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">OWA</span>/<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">IMAP</span>. This is alarming in my opinion. The most alarming thing is that all connections can be closed and you can still <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">login</span> using the old password (although I don't know for how long). <br /><br />This issue is per <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">CAS</span> server. We usually have two, so this issue would not be as obvious normally (as the server the user logged into using the old password is the only server that will allow <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">logins</span> to continue using the old password).<br /><br />I am going to log a urgent call with Microsoft about this. For info we are using Exchange 2007 SP1 RU5 on one front end and Exchange 2007 RU5 on all <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">backends</span>. The other front end has recently been upgraded to RU7, but the issue remains.<br /><br />Anyone else seeing this?Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-27754688684584456332009-07-08T06:53:00.002+00:002009-07-08T07:03:46.527+00:00Support for Citrix Secure Gateway08/07/09<br /><br />We currently run Citrix PS 4.0. Due to support running out at the end of this year we have been looking at upgrading to XenApp and have run into confusion over whether Citrix Secure Gateway is still supported or if we need to switch to using Access Gateways. It seems that the general confusion about support for SG is fairly widespread, perhaps because Citrix really want customers to start using Access Gateways. Anyway, we did not need all the benefits that AGs have over SGs so through our helpful support people we put the question to our Citrix account manager. It took a while to get an answer (the confusion does not seem to be limited to customers), but the good news is that Secure Gateway support is directly linked to support for XenApp. Therefore SG 3.1 will be supported as long as XenApp 5.0 is supported. The following Citrix article explains a little more:<a href="http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110115">http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110115</a><br />Although this article is 3 years old we are told by Citrix that it is still valid.<br /><br />With this info we can get on with our XenApp upgrade!Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-76065795716951071642009-07-01T14:38:00.003+00:002009-07-02T13:23:44.446+00:00Appsense - Internal Server Error01/07/09<br /><br />I have been having fun trying to get Appsense 8.2 to work following the database being accidentally deleted by a colleague. Despite the Management configuration utility providing a facility to create a new database it refused to use its new database and kept trying to use old settings. I gave up and reinstalled.<br />The reinstall did not fix the initial problem I was seeing with loading the Management Console. Basically it reported that the server returned HTML instead of XML. When I went to the Management Server website directly it returned a 501 error, specifically related to custom HTML error pages using explicit paths. I opened all the web.config files (there are about six of them under the Appsense installation directly) and deleted the CustomErrors sections. All then worked.<br />I have no idea why and when this issue started. All I can imagine is that it is related to the installation of Windows 2008 SP2.<br /><br />02/07/09<br /><br />The very efficient chaps at Appsense spotted this blog entry and sent me the following link:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.myappsense.com/content/knowledgebase/solutionDetails.aspx?sid=50120000000EW3dAAG">https://www.myappsense.com/content/knowledgebase/solutionDetails.aspx?sid=50120000000EW3dAAG</a><br /><br />You will need a MyAppsense account to get to this, but as an Appsense customer you should have one. That will teach me for not checking the knowledge base articles before upgrading!<br /><br />Anyway the issue is related to a Windows 2008 SP2 security change. The advice given in the article as the same as the way I fixed and problem. Importantly it does state that you should not change the %PROGRAMFILES%\AppSense\Environment Manager\Personalization Server% and PROGRAMFILES%\AppSense\Performance Manager\Central Statistics\Incoming web.config files (I better go and fix mine). It also states that the issue is fixed in v8 SP2, but I don't seem to be able to download that just yet.<br /><br />Now onto why my upgraded v7 App Manager config causes my server to go totally nuts and stops a number of core services from starting and even entirely kills the network connection! I quess I'll be creating that from scratch :-).Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-42786721724995567042009-04-07T07:21:00.003+00:002009-04-07T10:36:26.042+00:00Exchange 2007 IMAP RFC822.SIZE and Pine/AlpineA common problem with Exchange 2007 IMAP when used with Pine/Alpine is alerts indicating that a message has shrunk. What is happening here is that Pine is retrieving the RFC822.size from Exchange, downloading the message and comparing the real message size with the size Exchange 2007 provides. Sadly there often is a huge discrepency, sometimes by as much as a factor of two. Interestingly Pine only checks for size decreases in case of data loss during copy hence you only see this message appear on some emails, not all. If Pine checked for message decreases and increases you would see it for pretty much all emails. <br /><br />Microsoft have so far explained that the size returned by Exchange prior to Exchange 2003 was based on the MIME message stored in the STM database. As the STM database no longer exists in Exchange 2007 the RFC822.size is calculated based on the MIME skeleton and the original MIME message size. This is done for performance reasons. I have asked Microsoft for clarification as to why the original MIME size of the message is vastly different to the regenerated MIME message and am waiting for clarification. <br /><br />There is an Alpine code change that will supress this message (if you are happy to lose the safety check), or you can apply a change to Exchange on either a server or on individual mailboxes. The setting is nothing secret but documentation is very scarce. It is worth mentioning that making this change has a performance penalty as it forces Exchnage to regenerate each message as MIME and then send the size of the regenerated MIME message every time a message size is read.<br /><br />For the server:<br /><br />Set-ImapSettings -EnableExactRFC822Size:$true<br /><br />For each user:<br /><br />Set-CASMailbox "username" -ImapUseProtocolDefaults:$false -ImapEnableExactRFC822Size:$true<br /><br /><br />Although this solves this particular problem, sadly other issues persist with Pine and Exchange 2007 like Pine crashing when opening messages with Digital signatures and Pine not handling multipart messages correctly. It seems that although these issues only appear in Pine/Alpine (and perhaps Mutt), it appears to be Exchange that is failing to follow the RFC standards (and Pine is a stickler for standards!). <br /><br />I'm sure we will get there soon!Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-35749903907687486772009-02-26T14:57:00.002+00:002009-02-26T15:03:47.982+00:00Exchange 2007 SP1 RU5 - IMAP Error 4999Hi,<br /><br />Like many other people we have been suffering from our Exchange 2007 SP1 RU5 IMAP service constantly falling over with the following error:<br /><br />Watson report about to be sent to dw20.exe for process id: 6848, with parameters: E12, c-RTL-AMD64, 08.01.0336.000, M.E.Imap4, M.E.D.Common, M.E.D.G.OutboundCodePageDetector.AddText, System.ArgumentNullException, 3e79, 08.01.0336.000. ErrorReportingEnabled: False<br /><br />The good news is that we have put a stop to this by isolating it to a specific user. <br /><br />There are many records online about this being a known issue, which it seems is indeed the case and we have received the fix from Microsoft (which we intend to try on the 27/02) - KB960292. I will post how this goes. The problem relates to a null ID being presented during login that the IMAP service should ignore, but it fails instead.<br /><br />Anyway, what I wanted to share is that we have isolated this issue to the Sea Monkey 1.1.14 client. All three installations we know of are causing this issue and we have worked around it temporarily by preventing the users from logging in using IMAP (they are using OWA temporarily instead).<br /><br />Good luck if you are experiencing this problem.<br /><br />RobRob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-77951344081562340892009-02-13T17:55:00.003+00:002009-02-13T17:58:49.237+00:00Increasing Redirect to Voicemail Timeout on O2When I received by lovely new HTC Touch HD I found I kept missing calls as there was a slight delay between the caller calling and the phone starting to make a sound. I contacted O2 and they told me to run the following command :<br /><br />**61*901*10*??#<br /><br />?? is the delay you want in increments of 5 up to 30. I went for:<br /><br />**61*901*10*25#<br /><br />Works a treat.<br /><br />I hope this saves someone a bit of time.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-32705047686376240862009-01-07T08:54:00.002+00:002009-01-07T08:59:14.978+00:00This is the home email address of this recipient. It cannot be removedIt has been a while since I posted, but I came across a nuisance error this morning: "This is the home email address of this recipient. It cannot be removed". The address that could not be removed was not the primary address and what's more this was a mailbox, not a contact, so I could not just delete it without disrupting the user. I needed to remove the rogue address as it had been created in error and was a domain that was not managed by Exchange. Anyway, I launched ADSIEdit.msc, found the attribute TargetAddress (<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa487600(EXCHG.65).aspx">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa487600(EXCHG.65).aspx</a>) and cleared it. I could then go back to ADUC and remove the rogue address. After about 20 minutes mail started to be delivered to the mailbox once again.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-59462360557922624922008-06-13T09:19:00.003+00:002008-06-13T09:37:54.717+00:00Using the Safari Browser with the Citrix Web Interface 4.0Citrix provide a very helpful article at <a href="http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104367">http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104367</a> describing how to customise the Citrix Web Interface 4.0. to support the Mac client on Safari. This works well, but it is not the whole job as when the user logs off and back on again, they will find their client is set back to Java. It also does not present the user client installation prompts in the message centre until they are logged on.<br /><br />It is fortunately very simple to complete the job. Follow the steps in the Citrix article and then do exactly the same for the following files in the auth folder as you did for the same named files in the site folder: include.cs, embed.cs, install.cs.<br /><br />Works a treat. Obviously all changes should be tested in a dev environment first and don't forget to read Citrix's disclaimer on the webpage linked above.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-20550682249684949932008-05-28T13:22:00.004+00:002008-05-28T13:32:08.376+00:00Windows Live MeshI recieved my invite to Live Mesh today and found it would not install and reported that I should check my network settings: "Installer encountered errors: Please verify your network settings and attempt to reinstall".<br /><br />Well all was fine with my network settings. I tried setting my locale to US as suggested on some site and ensured that UAC was switched on. I then tried changing my auto proxy configuration script to a hard coded proxy (in IE connection settings) and Live Mesh then installed. So if anyone else sees this error and you are using an automatic configuration script for your proxy, that is why.<br /><br />Hopefully Microsoft will fix this at some point.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-81972678719068692732008-03-31T14:41:00.004+00:002008-03-31T14:48:37.184+00:00SPSS and Appsense Environment ManagerI am having trouble with SPSS 15 running on Citrix Presentation servers which also has Appsense Environment Manager running. Basically, Environment Manager kills the SPSS processor. I can reproduce this consistently and fix the problem by either disengaging the EM process, removing the EM DLLs or simply removing any applied EM policies.<br /><br />I have had a call open with Appsense about this for a few weeks. The only suggestion they have made so far is to upgrade to the most recent version. I did this (7.2.227), but it made no difference. <br /><br />Currently I am trying SPSS 16.0, but not having much luck as our license for SPSS 16.0 is not authorised for use on a terminal server......... Hopefully I will have a call from SPSS soon to establish how I can run this test.<br /><br />Has anyone seen this issue?<br /><br />I will keep this post updated, but it looks like we are going to have to switch of Environment Manager on our Citrix servers and live without the good things that it does.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-32225265621264950532008-03-11T11:32:00.005+00:002008-03-11T11:45:15.357+00:00SoftGrid 4.1 - Desktop Refresh Times Out - Error 10000005<span style="font-family:arial;">I've had issues with SoftGrid today with all Desktop Refreshes failing and no applications launching. Unfortunately this happened while I was rebuilding one of the VAS servers so I wasted a lot of time trying to trouble shoot issues that could have been caused by removing this server.......</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The errors I was seeing in the sftlog.txt file when trying to launch applications were:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><em>[03/11/2008 08:00:28.370 AMGR WRN] {hap=1:app=CorelDRAW X3 13.0.0.739:tid=4FC}The SoftGrid Client lost contact with a server and entered disconnected mode.<br />[03/11/2008 08:00:28.385 JGSW ERR] {hap=1:app=CorelDRAW X3 13.0.0.739:tid=148C:usr=srvrjh}The SoftGrid client could not connect to stream URL 'rtsp://appstreaming.leeds.ac.uk:554/cdrawtst/cdrawtst.sft' (FS status: 1600190A-00000120).<br />[03/11/2008 08:00:28.385 SWAP ERR] {hap=1:app=CorelDRAW X3 13.0.0.739:tid=148C:usr=srvrjh}The client was unable to connect to a SoftGrid server (rc 1600190A-00000120)<br />[03/11/2008 08:00:28.432 TRAY ERR] {tid=C88:usr=srvrjh}The SoftGrid Client could not launch CorelDRAW X3 13.0.0.739.<br /><br />An unexpected error occurred. Please report the following error code to your System Administrator.<br /><br />Error code: 41112E-1600190A-00000120</em></span> <br />This turned out to be nothing to do with the VAS rebuild and was actually associated with the provider policy. It seems that SoftGrid does not use native Windows authentication but instead employs LDAP. In our architecture LDAP often causes issues. We have two domains, a forest root and a child. The child domain is first in the alphabet. <br /><br />Anyway, we performed some AD upgrade work at the weekend and the one domain controller in the child domain that the VAS servers could contact was offline (in case we needed to revert back the domain). We accepted the fact that users in this domain would not be able to authenticate to the VAS servers during this period, as we have no softgrid users in that domain at present. However what we did not anticipate is that because a group of users from the child domain was defined in the provider policy, SoftGrid would time out trying to contact the domain and it would break all desktop refreshes and all applications (that were not 100% pre-cached).<br /><br />Microsoft states the issues we were seeing are related database problems, but I would suggest that before you do anything with your databases that you check your provider policy and look for any groups that have not been properly resolved.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-38108794395363029462008-01-15T09:11:00.000+00:002008-01-15T09:18:39.794+00:00ISA 2006 Custom Login PageI have a couple of custom login pages on ISA 2006 to fit with company branding. This all works well with one problem. When a user enters an incorrect username or password, every now and again the user is dropped back to the default ISA login page. This does not break anything and the user can carry on to login ok, but it looks a bit daft and is very confusing for the end user. I may well be logging this with Microsoft, but I would rather not as it seems like an issue that Microsoft are going to want a lot of information on and because it is very intermittent it could take a lot of time (of which I don't have much). If anyone has found a work around/fix for this I would love to know. Please post to this blog entry. I'll keep it updated if I get anywhere with it.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-60590887008038875842007-12-13T11:03:00.000+00:002007-12-13T11:07:37.085+00:00Softgrid DocumentationAre you looking for the Softgrid 4.1/4.2 Documentation/Softgrid Admin installation guide? Well it is well hidden and oddly not linked from the Softgrid home page and you will be hard pressed to find it on Google. Anyway, it is here: <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940163">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940163</a><br /><br />I hope that helps save someone a bit of time hunting around.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-20475739499058682082007-11-16T08:44:00.000+00:002008-02-08T14:37:33.837+00:00Master Site Directory in Sharepoint 2007 Error<span style="font-family:arial;">I ran into an error when trying to assign a master site directory in MOSS 2007 Central Admin:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;">This not a valid site directory. Specify a URL to a site that is using the site directory template.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I checked that the URL was valid and that it was pointing to a Directory Site. I even created a new directory site and tried that with no luck. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I worked out that if I set the default public URL to be a simple name like site, instead of site.domain.co.uk, the master site directory page accepts the entry and it all works. However this is no good as we need a proper FQDN as the default public URL (and changing it back after setting the MSD breaks the MSD functionality).</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">I have a call open with Microsoft through ESCUK about this. This call has been dragging on for a long time and somehow Microsoft have not been able to reproduce the problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">I'll keep this post updated as and when I hear something back from Microsoft. I would be very interested to hear if anyone else is seeing this problem so I can feed back to Microsoft. Thanks!</span></p><p>07/01/08</p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Microsoft have finally reproduced this problem and have acknowledged it as a 'possible bug', as such it has been escalated. No news as to a fix yet.</span></p><p>23/01/08</p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Today I had a call from a developer at Microsoft who has been looking through the code used by the Master Site Functionality and established that it first checks for the existance of the site in the configuration database. This is interesting because apparently if it does not find the exact URL in the config database it will reject it. This means that if you use a different default AAM to the URL you used when creating the web application that hosts your MSD, the lookup will fail. The only way I know of to fix this is to extend your web application and use the URL of your default AAM as the URL for your new IIS site and set this extended web app to use a different zone (i.e. Intranet). The default AAM URL will end up the default AAM for two different zones and will now appear in the configuration database (as it is added by Central Admin when you use it to extend the web app). This is not pretty and I don't advise you go ahead with it in the production environment without taking advice from Microsoft.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Fortunately our default AAM was also the URL that was used to create the original web application used to host the MSD. Therefore the work around above is not appropriate. Back to the drawing board...... </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Quick thought...... if using NetBios names fixes the problem, what could be happening differently for FQDNs. Perhaps a proxy issue. However I have made sure that our proxy is configured to be disabled for the application pool and service accounts. However each web application's web.config file by default sets the proxy to auto=true. The developer at Microsoft suggested changing this to false for the Central Administration web application. That did the trick! We now have a full functional master site directory. It was a very long time coming for a simple solution, but a good learning experience.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">To make this change go to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\****, where **** is the port number of your Central Admin site. If you are not sure which is the right virtual directory open IIS Admin, right click on the Central Admin site and choose Explore. Right click in the white space to the right and select properties to get the folder and path. Open the web.config and locate the following:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />(system.net)<br />(defaultProxy)<br />(proxy autoDetect="true")<br />(/defaultProxy)<br />(/system.net)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Change to: </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><br />(system.net)<br />(defaultProxy)<br />(proxy autoDetect="false")<br />(/defaultProxy)<br />(/system.net) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">You will also need to do this for any web applications that you want to create Site Collections from within a Site Directory page (and make use of the Master Site Directory feature).</span> Hhowever if you do this you may want to use something more like below so that web parts like RSS readers can <span style="font-family:arial;">connect to external feeds.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><defaultproxy><proxy proxyaddress="http://???.???.com:3128" bypassonlocal="true"><bypasslist><add address="[a-z]+\.domain\.local\.com$"><add address="192\.168\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"></bypasslist></defaultproxy><br /><br />This adds exceptions for *.domain.local.com and 198.168.*.*</span><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I hope this saves someone a lot of time!</span></p>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-89880006716933028972007-11-15T14:48:00.000+00:002007-11-16T08:42:08.891+00:00Sharepoint 2007 - Server Farm Configuration Not Complete<span style="font-family:arial;">Along with many others my MOSS 2007 Farm has been running for some time saying that it's configuration is not complete. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This was starting to get annoying so I decided to investigate. I deleted all the Administrator Tasks and ensured all the services were running where they should be. I even went to the extent of ensuring everything that could be configured was configured. The only thing remaining was to switch on farm features that I did not want, so I switched on Excel Calculation Services and started the service on one WFE server. The message went away! I was then able to stop the service and switch off the feature and the message did not come back.</span>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-3752612817380788412007-11-13T09:48:00.002+00:002008-05-20T14:18:31.380+00:00Sharepoint 2007 - Problem with Profile synchronisation and My Sharepoint SitesWe have another issue with Sharepoint 2007 in which one site collection and all of its subsites are not appearing in our My Sharepoint Sites list. I have run through all the basic tests and ensured that the right people are in the Site Members list and have even recreated the Site groups and added the members back in, but nothing works. More than this though, it seems that none of the profile synchonisation (a Sharepoint timer job) is being run against this site collection as any changes to users profiles from <em>MySites/Profiles/directly on the SSP</em> are not reflected in the people and groups pages on the problem site collection. For example if I delete my profile picture i.e.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/Rzl1RIRpBkI/AAAAAAAAAAM/SqJmmld-ATI/s1600-h/Untitled.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132262187505092162" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 319px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 210px" height="306" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/Rzl1RIRpBkI/AAAAAAAAAAM/SqJmmld-ATI/s320/Untitled.jpg" width="508" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This change is reflected everywhere but this site collection where it still attempts to reference it:<br /><br /><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/Rzl1l4RpBlI/AAAAAAAAAAU/CdoxPooH5wk/s1600-h/Untitled.jpg"></a><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/Rzl1w4RpBmI/AAAAAAAAAAc/5I_5ZXgUIpw/s1600-h/Untitled.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132262732965938786" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 343px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 210px" height="206" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_CWA5x91EgGE/Rzl1w4RpBmI/AAAAAAAAAAc/5I_5ZXgUIpw/s320/Untitled.jpg" width="664" border="0" /></a><br />I used Quest Recovery Manager to restore this site collection so currently have an open call with them and depending on how things go will also open a call with Microsoft to see if they can offer a fix for this.<br /><br /><br />Any ideas or feedback greatly appreciated. As always I will update this post when I have a fix/workaround.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-91790103562401968682007-11-13T09:11:00.001+00:002008-01-04T14:14:49.044+00:00Office 2007 and Vista, persistent cookies do not work<span style="font-family:arial;">I have run into another issue with SharePoint 2007 which specifically only affects Office 2007 running on Windows Vista.<br /><br />We have SharePoint setup using ISA 2006 for forms based authentication. This works perfectly for XP/2003 with Office 2003/2007 and Vista with Office 2003. However when we open a document from SharePoint 2007 using Office 2007 on Vista, we are prompted for a password. This is rather annoying. I have opened a call with Microsoft to see if I can get to the bottom of this.<br /><br />There are numerous articles out there saying that this is to do with IE Protected mode, but we have this switched off for the Intranet zone (hence it works fine in Office 2003 on Vista).<br /><br />Even more worrying than the simple inconvenience of the prompt is that fact that WebDAV caches the users' credentials. Imagine the scenario that you go to a public access machine and log onto SharePoint using ISA FBA. You then open a document and enter your credentials. You then finish working and log off Sharepoint and close the browser. You would think you were now logged off, but you are not as WebDAV is still caching your credentials. Whoops!<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffccff;">04/01/2008</span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Following my call being escalated by the good guys at ESK UK to Microsoft, it has now been escalated within Microsoft. I've just been on a call with a very helpful escalation engineer at Microsoft who has confirmed that this issue is related to Office 2007 on Vista trying to use WebDAV and WebDAV trying to authenticate using Windows Auth, rather than using the persistent cookies. As our server is connected via ISA using FBA, Windows auth falls back to basic auth and then WebDAV caches the credentials (until the webclient service is restarted or the user logs off). </span></p><span style="font-family:arial;">The engineer has provided a useful <span style="color:#ff6666;">workaround</span>: install the Web Client update for Vista (</span><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;907306"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;907306</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">) and then set all Office Apps to run in compatibility mode. This has a couple of drawbacks other than the work involved. Firstly it loses the enhanced ability that WebDav has to be able to browse up and down SharePoint web applications and secondly it does not resolve the password prompt you get when when you try to use Explorer view (I don't know of a way of telling Explorer to run in compatibility mode). Nevertheless we will use this workaround on the few Vista machines we have, but will certainly have to think twice before rolling Outlook Vista and Office 2007 to our 12,000 desktops.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The following registry keys can be set to tell Office Apps to run in XP SP2 compatibility mode. Remember you can really mess up your machine by changing the wrong registry settings so back it up and go careful:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]<br />"winword.exe"="WINXPSP2"</span>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-87862496421007759972007-10-16T09:37:00.000+00:002007-10-16T09:50:48.726+00:00SQL 2005 Reporting Services "The ReportServerVirtualDirectory element is missing"<p><span style="font-family:arial;">I had this issue after a clean install of IIS followed by Reporting Services. I configured reporting services using the config tool and ended up with green ticks against all sections. The reportserver url worked fine and reports were accessible, however when accessing </span><a href="http://servername/reports"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://servername/reports</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, I received the error "The ReportServerVirtualDirectory element is missing".</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Following looking around I found the following article:</span></p><p><a href="http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=741808&SiteID=1"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=741808&SiteID=1</span></a></p><span style="font-family:arial;">This page provides the following fix which worked perfectly:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Open C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Reporting Services\ReportManager\RSWebApplication.config using notepad or equivalent. Find the line <reportservervirtualdirectory></reportservervirtualdirectory>and add "<reportservervirtualdirectory></reportservervirtualdirectory>" so that it looks like: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><reportservervirtualdirectory>"<reportservervirtualdirectory>ReportServer</reportservervirtualdirectory>"</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Save the file and reload the page.</span>Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814944222150517832.post-23245860658162653032007-10-13T11:07:00.001+00:002008-03-31T14:59:42.425+00:00Citroen C4 ReliabilityThis is a big step away from my usual postings, but I had to share my experience of owning a Citroen C4 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">VTR</span></span></span></span></span> with the wider world.<br /><br />When I purchased the car I had a six week honeymoon period when I enjoyed driving it and loved the way it looked, I even managed to overlook the rattles and squeaks. After six weeks the pain began. I have had the car for 22 months now and in that period it has been in the garage for warranty repairs 22 times! In total it has cost me over £200 in costs of insuring courtesy cars and an untold amount of hassle, not to mention the fact that I hardly see my car these days, have to drive around in basic small cars and am generally sick and tired of it.<br /><br />Well I have had a case open with Citroen for some time and am hoping to get some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">compensation</span></span> and get rid of my C4 (which I have now not seen for three weeks). I have tried two garages who have both not yet been able to fix the issues. Citroen so far have said 'we want to restore your <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">confidence</span></span> in the Citroen and will work with the dealer'. Well times are well beyond that now and I want and expect a lot more. I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday who has a lot of experience of managing auto repair centres and he described Citroen technical (the guys that are supposed to help the garages with difficult problems) as hopeless. Even more worrying a technician I spoke to in a garage described the experience as sometimes as helpful as phoning a snowman (it was a cold day).<br /><br />I'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks and keep this blog updated.<br /><br />In the mean time, if you are thinking of buying a C4, don't!!!! Go and buy a Ford Focus instead, it may look bland but at least you will get to see it and it won't rattle and break all the time (and it handles better). If not the Focus and you want something that looks good go for the Seat Leon.<br /><br />15/12/07<br />The saga continues. I again was told that the issue was fixed (I've lost count of how many times I have been told this now) so I went to the garage (not very optimistically), sat in the car and reproduced the problem immediately. So another week without my car and another £15.50 lost on covering the insurance on the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">courtesy</span> car. I logged another call with Citroen Customer services who called me back within 2 days and told me that they were very concerned, would contact the garage and that the next step would be to send a Citroen engineer to look at it. About time I would say, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">after all</span> two dealers have now had 11 opportunities to fix it. Why don't we have a law like Lemons law in the US? Anyway, Citroen Technical have another couple of ideas which parts are ordered for. If this does not help I don't expect any progress until the New Year as the Citroen Regional Customer Services Manager is on leave.<br /><br />19/12/07<br />I was promised a call from Citroen customer services today. No call.<br /><br />20/12/07<br />Still no call and no contact from the garage.<br /><br />21/12/07<br />I called the garage and spoke to one of the really helpful guys on the service desk who told me they believe the issue was with the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">BSI</span></span></span></span> (I think that's what it was called), the thing that interfaces to the ECU and connects the cables. Anyway apparently Citroen don't think this is the problem and have not authorised its replacement, even though the garage has ordered the part and has it in stock. The Garage have told me that they are going to try swapping the cables round coming from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">BSI</span></span></span></span> from the OF to NS doors and see if the fault follows the cable to the other door. If it does then they know the problem is with the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">BSI</span></span></span></span>. Unfortunately with the Christmas period the engineer at the garage is quite rightly on leave until the 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">nd</span></span></span></span> of January so nothing will happen until then. Kindly the garage have allowed me to hold onto the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">courtesy</span> car which is now beginning to feel like my own car as I have had it for five weeks!<br /><br />04/01/08 AM<br />Awaiting feedback from the garage and still no courtesy call from Citroen. I have now spent in excess of £120.00 on insuring courtesy cars.<br /><br />04/01/08 PM<br />I called the garage. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">BSI</span></span></span></span> cables have been swapped round and the problem remained with the passenger side window. Now all relevant parts have been replaced except the entire door and the ECU. I'm writing to Citroen today and seeking legal advice as this is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">ridiculous</span></span>. As it stands the problem has changed again in that it now works <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">OK</span></span></span> from the passenger side control but not from the driver side and the issue with freezing after going up and down just twice (which the garage introduced early December 07) is still evident. The garage, who continue to try very hard with this, have been told to expect a call from someone at Citroen in France. I have had to extend the courtesy car cover by yet another week. Between two garages Citroen has now had nearly 8 weeks to put this issue right. I wish there was some proper legal advice on what do to in these situations. The problem is not with the seller as the issue was not there at the time of sale, so the sale of good act as far as I see it does not apply. However there must be some rules about a suitable level of warranty repair!<br /><br />09/01/08<br />I've not heard anything more from Citroen or the garage so have now written a letter to Citroen customer services asking for a formal response within seven days with an action plan. I have told Citroen that I will be contacting a solicitor in seven days if I do not have a response or their response is unsatisfactory.<br /><br />10/01/08<br />Still nothing from Citroen. I had a call from the garage though who asked me to pop by, so I did. They had the car stripped back when I got to the garage and showed me what they had been doing. The garage told me they had been chasing Citroen technical all week and they were not returning their calls. The garage have been suggesting replacing the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">BSI</span></span> for a few weeks now and had the part ordered in, however Citroen would not authorise them to replace the part (presumably because they did not want to pay for it). Well the garage decided to cut their losses, as like myself they have lost money on this problem due to Citroen being hopeless and not giving them suitable advice and having to spend a huge amount of time on the problem. The garage decided to fit the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">BSI</span></span> and potentially take on the cost themselves. This has resolved the problem. The window still does not work perfectly due to an over-sensitive window switch on the driver's side, but I can live with that.<br /><br />13/01/08<br />Window still working <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ok</span></span>, fantastic! I took some chocolates into the garage to thank them for their great work and for going beyond the book. I am pursuing my case with Citroen and have not heard anything back yet. I am bitterly <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">disappointed</span> with Citroen and want to see some <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">financial</span> compensation for the way I have been treated and the hassle I have been put through. Seems like they may be busy though as the C4 seems to be full of electric problems from the stereo switching itself off after 2 minutes if then engine is not running (Citroen's response: go for a 2 hour drive and then try again; how <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">ridiculous</span>) to not being able to get into the car due to a failure in the locking <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">electricals</span></span>, all within the warranty period. I dread to think what will happen after the three year warranty. The car has to go!<br /><br />14/01/08<br />I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">recieved</span> a call from Citroen customer services regional service manager today who asked me to put together some rough costing of my expenses incurred as a result of warranty repairs. I calculated £280 if you don't take into account by time and £470 if you do.<br /><br />17/01/08 AM<br />My Window still works but the new seal they have put on is not tight so there is a lot of wind noise on the motorway. Therefore it is going back into the garage again soon !!!<br /><br />17/01/08 PM<br />Today I received a letter from Citroen sincerely <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">apologising</span> for the inconvenience and offering me a 12 month extension to my manufacturer's warranty. I think this is a big step in the right direction, although I'm not sure if it goes far enough to making up for my expenses. However this is not a perfect world and to be fair to Citroen it does show willing to help and that they acknowledge that the experience I have had is not acceptable. I'm inclined to accept the offer and keep the car for another year to take advantage of it. My colleagues are telling me to seek legal advice and push for more. I'm just not sure if I can be bothered.<br /><br />22/01/08<br />Well it did not last long. I took the car for a long drive and it has four new problems. The seal on the passenger's window is knackered so it sounds like the Window is open all the time - very annoying on the motorway. The passenger door is no longer aligned with the car body, the internal light will not stay on and the car no longer knows that I have front fog lights! Booked back in for the 04/02/08.<br /><br />31/03/08<br />I've not updated this for a while as I lost heart with it all. Since my last post the garage have (across three further visits) managed to fix all issues including cruise control failures, fog lights, wind noise, internal light and another safety recall. Now the car is working 100% I'm quickly getting rid of it. Because I don't want any responsibilty for future problems I have cut my losses and am trading it in. I'm getting myself a Fiat Bravo Dymanic 150T. Can't wait. Hopefully it will be as reliable as the last Fiat I had.Rob Headhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15707928365735197888noreply@blogger.com7