SharePoint ULS

Empty log files

Ran into an annoying issue today where a SharePoint server was not writing trace log messages, the result was a log directory with 0 bytes logging files.

Incidentally I found a Event Log error with the code:
“A Session “WSSUSAGESESSION15” failed to start with the following error: 0xC0000022”

Other posts mention adding the service account (or the WSS_WPG group) for the ‘SharePoint Tracing Service’ Windows Service to the administrators group, tested that, this indeed fixes the problem. However this does not conform to the principle of least privileged accounts.

Creators update

The issue

Since the Creators Update navigating to any Google site (google.com, google.co.uk, google.nl, etc.) results in an INET_E_RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND error, only on my work laptop, none of my other devices which I’ve also upgraded.

This only happened with Google, no other site had this issue… furthermore I could reach Google(.com) fine via Ping from commandline, Internet Explorer, FireFox and Chrome…

Cleared my (Edge) browser cache, history, etc. no results. Everything was working fine until the Creators Update.

Creators Update

The Issue

Last week I upgraded all my personal Windows 10 devices to build 1703 (Creators Update) and after a few days of testing I was convinced this build is solid enough to upgrade my work laptop as well… true so far except for one minor issue! When I had to connect to a client’s RemoteApp and Desktop Connection gateway, which they host on Windows Server 2008R2, I got the following error: “Your computer can’t connect to the Remote Desktop Gateway server. Contact your network administrator for assistance.” I don’t know exactly what changed in this Windows build with regards to the RDP client, however I worked around it by restoring the following two files to the Windows System32 folder, from the Windows.old folder:

Password change notification

Version 1.4

Recently I found myself in need of a password change notification script. What do all efficient/lazy administrators do when they need a script for any purpose? Right, I searched one online, downloaded it, checked it, suppressed any desire to fiddle with it and then scheduled it to run. For those interested, I used the script provided by Robert Pearman over at the Technet Gallery. For Office365 compatibility check his post here…

Custom Domain names

Azure Websites

I’ve only recently set up this blog and since it’s always busy at work, I don’t always have the time to sort out those ’nice to haves’. I’m hosting this blog using AzureWebsites, but obviously I use my own domain name. My pain? For the life of me I couldn’t figure out the magic rule to rewrite my x.azurewebsites.net url to the proper ‘bearman.nl’ hostname I’m using now. Shame on me, Microsoft consultant couldn’t figure out a simple IIS redirect rule… In my defense, I hadn’t really taken the time to do it properly and I had in fact solved it, but in the wrong order. To setup an AzureWebsite using a custom domain you need to configure it in several places:

Skype for Business: High Availability SQL Database Availability Group Configuration

One of those silly mistakes…

I’ve recently installed and configured a new Skype for Business landscape at my company. While implementing this I made one of those silly mistakes that cause you to spend hours looking for a solution… which is in fact one simple undocumented configuration setting. For our SfB configuration we use a high availability SQL cluster and we’ve also set up a Database Availability Group, or DAG. Once enabled, the first field gets relabeled ‘SQL Server Availability Group Listener FQDN’, the second ‘SQL Server FQDN’. Initially before enabling the DAG I set these values: