Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest for December 2012

    I’m a tad remiss in posting the December 2012 digest for my “Exchange Unwashed” blog that appears on WindowsITPro.com. My only excuse is that I’ve been busy working on chapters for Exchange 2013 Inside Out (Volume 1 – Volume 2 is being written by Paul Robichaux) and should take this…

  • Busy week, lots of commentary about Exchange 2013

    It’s been a busy week. First, I ran into an Exchange 2013 bug (shock, horror, cover the eyes of any watching children) when MRS stubbornly refused to export the contents of a mailbox to a PST using the New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet. The job would get to the 10% stage where the…

  • Missing functionality in Exchange 2013 EAC

    I’ve spent quite a bit of time going through the new browser-based Exchange Administration Center (EAC), the replacement for the now aged Exchange Management Console (EMC) in Exchange 2013 to create content for Microsoft Exchange 2013 Inside Out. As I’ve gone through the various sections of EAC, I’ve noted where bits…

  • Applying a retention policy to control Exchange 2013 Health Mailboxes (or trying to, anyway)

    Reading Jeff Guillet’s ExBPA blog the other day, I came across an entry describing a solution for the problem posed by Exchange 2013’s health mailboxes when journaling. The health mailboxes are new in Exchange 2013 and are used by the Managed Availability system to send probes to different Exchange components…

  • ThoughtsofanIdleMind blog stats 2012 in review

    Interestingly for me (at least), the nice people at WordPress.com sent me the following information. The most useless fact of all is that of the 397,205 views generated during the year, just 5 came from Laos. I shall clearly have to do better to encourage more Laotian readers. In any…

  • Family IT help desk calls over the holidays

    Like most IT pros, I suspect that I am the de facto CIO-and-support desk for others in the house. And so it proved over Christmas, with a variety of calls for assistance to resolve various IT issues. First up was to get my son’s Windows RT Surface up and running.…

  • Google loses ActiveSync patent case in London

    On December 23, 2011 Microsoft sued Motorola Mobility in the High Court in London in an action (reference HC11C04536) that eventually came before Mr Justice Arnold on December 3, 2012. I first heard about the case in May when I was contacted by Bird & Bird, a firm of London…

  • Microsoft withdraws problematic updates from WSUS, but no cause to celebrate

    Yesterday I published a note on WindowsITPro.com describing the confusion that erupted when Microsoft issued KB2506143 (for Windows 2008 R2 SP1) and KB2506146 (for Windows 2008 SP2) through WSUS, a step that normally indicates to system administrators that the fixes pointed to by the articles should be installed on servers,…

  • Google and Microsoft spat over ActiveSync: Hardly a war, more like a skirmish

    January 30 Update: Just on the deadline, it seems like Google has acceded to a request from Microsoft to extend its support for ActiveSync connections to Gmail until July 31, 2013. The step simply makes sense as it reduces the number of users who would otherwise be mad at Google. …

  • VAX Notes remembered

    I was surprised and delighted to come across a White Paper called “The Camelot of Collaboration” that documents the use of a now-forgotten technology called VAX Notes within the late-lamented Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Collaboration comes naturally to many today given information presented on blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook, the…