Exchange slow to add new users to GAL

Exchange was very slow to dsiplay new users... when I say very slow, I mean several hours wait.

I'd put it off for a while as there weren't many people joining, but eventually I realised it was something I was going to have to fix.

Taking a look at the Event Viewer gave no clues, so I headed onto the properites on the server just to see if I could spot anything obviously wrong.

Opening up the Directory Access tab, I noticed that none of my Domain Controllers (or indeed Global Catalogs) were listed.

Hmmm, something is up...

First I tried to manually add my DCs, but I thought better about this.. there must be a reason why this is behaving this way.

Then I got a suggestion that I should take a look at the AD to check if the DomainPrep changes were applied. I thought this was ridiculous as Exchange has been running perfectly for the last five years in this environment... heck I've even DomainPrep'd it for Exchange 2007... ah!

After running the Policytest tool found on the Exchange 2003 install disk, I got the following results.

DC = "DC1"
In site = "USA"
!!! Right NOT found !!! 

DC = "DC2"
In site = "USA"
!!! Right NOT found !!! 

DC = "DC4"
In site = "USA"
!!! Right NOT found !!!

Great.. now I know what's wrong.. one swift reinstallation of the DomainPrep later ( X:\setup\i386\setup /DomainPrep) and everything is cool.

I ran the Policytest tool again and watched as the schema changes were replicated to my three DCs, then opened up properties on the Exchange Server node and saw that it was now using the local servers.

Phew!

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Fix Windows 7 Media Player Internet Streaming

I'm not going to go into the details of how you set up Windows Media Player in Windows 7, it's pretty self explanatory, streaming across PC's on the same network works well once you have a homegroup set up... until you get to the point when you want to stream across the Internet.

I was able to stream when in the same network, my office PC was in the same homegroup as the one at home and I'd set up my authorised users but still it wouldn't work...

After much head scratching I decided to give Microsoft a call as they must have experienced the issue before.

Initlaly they said it wouldn't work because my laptop (the machine in the office which was the client) would not be able to play music from my home PC as it was a member of a domain.

After reading the message out loud to the engineed a few times he accepted that it did indeed state that a Domain PC can't be the media server, but can be the Client.

Then we had the confusion because my home PC was Windows 7 Home Premium and the work one was Windows 7 Professional.

Finally I get escallated to someone else who then asked me the all important question:

Have you configured your firewall?

Apparently the firewall should be configured automatically by UPnP, but as a lot of routers are unreliable with UPnP it's a good idea to enter the port forwarding directly.

If you click on Stream - Allow Internet access to home media... you get the option to Diagnose Connections.

You need to set your home router up to forward TCP/44687 to TCP/10245 to your home PC.

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