Exchange 2007: Mapi session exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type “session”

Error Message: “Mapi session “/o=Organization/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=JohnSmith” exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type “session”".
Source: MSExchangeIS
Event ID: 9646

On the client side, the user is unable to connect to Microsoft Exchange or getting this error:

Unable to open your default e-mail folders. The Microsoft Exchange Server computer is not available. Either there are network problems or the Microsoft Exchange Server is down for maintenance.

This usually happens when the user loses network connectivity while Outlook is still open. The Exchange server wasn’t able to close the sessions properly so they just stayed there even when they are not in use.

By default, Exchange only allows up to 32 MAPI (Outlook) sessions per user. To fix this problem, you must close some of the sessions.

What to do:

1. Download and extract Sysinternals’ TCPView (free) on the Exchange server
2. Open the Exchange Management Shell and type in the following command to get a list of all the opened sessions. Make a note of the IP Addresses:
   Get-LogonStatistics jsmith | Sort-Object clientipaddress | Format-Table username,clientipaddress,logontime
3. Open Tcpview.exe on the server. Sort it by Remote Address, then sort it by Process.
4. Look for the IP Addresses from Step 2 in the Remote Address column (if you only see hostnames, go to Options -> uncheck Resolve Addresses) and close their connections for the store.exe process (right-click and choose Close Connection, you can select multiple connections by holding the Shift or Ctrl key)
5. Run the command from Step 2 again and you will see that the sessions disappeared. The user should now be able to connect to the Exchange server again.

System Administrator Appreciation Day

Don’t forget this very important day! It’s the last Friday of July (July 25 for this year). Mark it on your calendar!

Ok, I have to admit that I actually didn’t know that such a day existed until I found this site, which is the official System Administrator Appreciation Day website.

According to the site, this idea to have a special day for SysAdmins was created by Ted Kekatos, a system administrator in Chicago. He was inspired by a print ad for a Hewlett-Packer laserjet printer showing lines of employees bringing gifts for the IT guy who made the purchase.

The first SysAdmin Appreciation Day was celebrated on July 28, 2000. It has gained support from organizations such as the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA), Friends In Tech (FIT), Sunbelt Software, and “In The Trenches,” a podcast for SysAdmins.

The System Administrator Song

Related articles:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1460166.stm
• http://mcpmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=367

12 New Microsoft Security Updates This Tuesday

It’s that time of the month again, the second Tuesday of every month known as “Patch Tuesday,” the time when Microsoft releases its security updates.

According to Microsoft’s website, they will be releasing 12 new security updates this Tuesday, February 12. Seven considered “Critical”, five marked as “Important.”

Critical (7) – Software Affected:

1. Windows
2. Internet Explorer
3. Office
4. Visual Basic
5. VBScript
6. JSCript

Important (5) – Software Affected:

1. Windows
2. Active Directory
3. ADAM
4. IIS
5. Office
6. Works
7. Works Suite

Happy Patch Tuesday fellow systems admins, let’s hope nothing breaks!

BDD 2007: Can’t connect to the deployment share

Error message: “A connection to the deployment share (\\server\deployment_share) could not be made. The deployment will not proceed.”

I ran into this problem this morning when trying to load Windows XP on a new computer using Business Desktop Deployment and Windows Deployment Services. It turned out that the reason for this is because my WinPE boot image didn’t have the network drivers for the new computer (when you type in ipconfig /all in the command prompt in WinPE, you’ll notice that there’s no IP assigned).

I fixed this problem by doing the following:

1. Download the network drivers for the computer having this issue.
2. Open the Deployment Workbench.
3. Add the network drivers to Distribution Share->Out-of-Box Drivers.
4. Go to Deploy->Deployment Points, select your deployment point and click Update. This will update your WinPE boot image (LiteTouchPE_x86.wim) to include the new drivers.
5. Open Windows Deployment Services and replace your boot image.
6. Reboot the client machine and boot in WinPE again, it should now be able to connect to the deployment share.

PowerShell Cheat Sheet

I found this PowerShell Cheat Sheet a while back when I was looking for tips on PowerShell. It contains commands that you’ll be using a lot when working with PowerShell, and also examples on how to use them. Very helpful especially if you’re just starting to learn it. Also check out the PowerShell team blog where I got this document from.

Useful PowerShell Scripts

Below are some simple PowerShell scripts that I find pretty useful in Windows administration:

Note: For the scripts that connect to a remote machine, you will need to run PowerShell as a user with Administrator privileges to that machine.

Aliases:

• Gwmi = Get-WmiObject
• fl = Format-List
• ft = Fomat-Table
• -Comp = -ComputerName

Get a list of installed applications for a specified machine (32-bit OS only).
Gwmi Win32_Product -Comp computer_name | Sort name | ft name, version, installdate

Get the Service Tag (Dell computers) and BIOS version for a specified machine.
Gwmi Win32_BIOS -Comp computer_name

Get the computer information for a specified machine (Domain, Manufacturer, Model, Name, Owner, Memory).
Gwmi Win32_ComputerSystem -Comp computer_name | fl

Get storage drive information for a specified machine (Hard Drive, Floppy, CD/DVD-ROM).
Gwmi Win32_LogicalDisk -Comp computer_name | fl

Get the logged on user name for a specified machine.
Gwmi Win32_Computersystem -Comp computer_name | Select Name, UserName

Get the running processes for a specified machine.
Gwmi Win32_Process -ComputerName computer_name | Sort processname | ft processname, ws, executablepath