Ramifications of rebuilding the OWA

No good deed goes unpunished and no modification to a Windows OS goes smoothly. After getting OWA back and installed, I started having problems.

I noticed the problem when trying to add a new user into the domain and getting and error when creating an exchange mailbox. It was a critical error that showed up in a dialog box inside the Active Directory Users and Computers Interface.

When I looked into the Event Viewer I noticed I was getting a lot of these errors:

Event Source: MSExchangeSA
Event ID: 9097
Description:
The MAD Monitoring thread was unable to connect to WMI, error '0x80040154'.

Event Source: Userenv
Event ID: 1090
Description:
Windows couldn't log the RSoP (Resultant Set of Policies) session status. An attempt to connect to WMI failed. No more RSoP logging will be done for this application of policy.

Event Source: MSExchangeSA
Event ID: 9097
Description:
The MAD Monitoring thread was unable to connect to WMI, error '0x80040154'.

Here is the link on how to repair the WMI.

I figured I needed to backup the current system and think about doing a restore from a previous backup. I fired up NT Backup and started getting errors when trying to do shadow copies and this in the log:

Backup Status
Operation: Backup
Active backup destination: File
Media name: "Temp.bkf created 9/11/2007 at 9:50 AM"

Volume shadow copy creation: Attempt 1.
Timeout before function completed

Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:0xffffffff.

Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:ffffffff
Aborting Backup.

----------------------

The operation did not successfully complete.

I found this article on how to re-register the VSS dlls.

After repairing the WMI and re-registering the DLLs, I started up the backup again and got these errors:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VSS
Event Category: None
Event ID: 20
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: A critical component required by the Volume Shadow Copy service is not registered. This might happened if an error occurred during Windows setup or during installation of a Shadow Copy provider. The error returned from CoCreateInstance on class with CLSID {faf53cc4-bd73-4e36-83f1-2b23f46e513e} and Name VSSEvent is [0x80004002].

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VSS
Event Category: None
Event ID: 8193
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine CoCreateInstance. hr = 0x80004002.

I tried installing SP2 and it worked this time. I got WMI errors again after rebooting so I repaired and restarted. Still getting the MAD Monitoring thread crashing.

I tried doing a backup and it worked, VSS is working again.

And so it begins...

I finally decided to make time to start a blog about the work I do.

A bit about me. I am a 35 y/o IT administrator for a rural utility. Ex-army, college graduate, all-around geek that loves my time in front of the computer solving the puzzles that come with being the Admin of One.

I took the job a year and a half ago transitioning from programming and web developer extraordinaire. Now, one MCSE boot-camp later and lots of challenges, I am the IT Admin.

So here I start. A log of my accomplishments, education, challenges, and failures.

Re-create IIS-Exchange 2003 Virtual Directories

I created a reverse-proxy back to my Exchange server and had everything working. But I want more; I want to sync with my Windows Mobile device over the air. So I started looking into getting the reverse-proxy ready for ActiveSync. I ran into some problems and found random posts about directory security. I tried changing the user used for anonymous access, but that didn't fix my problem. I decided that I should try and "re-install" the virtual directories.

I found this article that shows step-by-step how to re-create the directories in IIS. Article
So I created the backup of the site by following Step 1, followed the rest of the steps, waited 15 minutes. Rebooted the computer. Waited 15 minutes. Rebooted again. The directories never came back. I looked everywhere on the net for ways of recovering from the configuration file I had created in Step1. They all talk about restoring from within IIS from backup points. I tried going back to the first backup point after installing Exchange 2003, but no-go.

Now I was looking at re-installing Exchange just to get OWA back. I came across a part of a post about moving IIS websites:

• If you have another IIS6.0 machine you can right click on the Default Web Site and select 'save configuration to file...' and then take the XML file it produces, copy it to this machine, right click on the 'Web Sites' folder and select New and then 'Website (form file)...". Point it to the XML file, select read and e that - it will create a duplicate of the Default Web Site from the other machine.

So I did that, and had it replace my Default Web Site. I removed the meta key, restarted MTA and everything is working again.

Just goes to show how important that backup is before you start to work, but more so....knowing how to restore from it.