I have been setting up Exchange Server 2007 for a client this weekend. Everything has been proceeding fairly smoothly, until I tried to test out Outlook Web Access. When going to the server from my browser, I would receive a “Service Unavailable” message.

Event Log gave much more information, thankfully:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: W3SVC-WP
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2274
Date: 3/2/2008
Time: 3:18:41 PM
User: N/A
Computer: xxxxxxxxxx
Description:
ISAPI Filter ‘c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\\aspnet_filter.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a AMD64 processor architecture. The data field contains the error number. To learn more about this issue, including how to troubleshooting this kind of processor architecture mismatch error, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29349.

The link didn’t help at all. Searching for “W3SVC-WP 2274″ on Microsoft’s support site also didn’t help. Thankfully, Google saves the day.

The fix is quite simple. Follow the directions in this link and OWA should start to work properly again.

Update:  This is a known issue when Blackberry Enterprise Server is installed on the same box.  See this link.

Microsoft somewhat-recently released a product that every business should consider – a hosted spam filtering and anti-virus service.  Originally Frontbridge, Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services offer a nice menu of mail-related services at very competitive prices.  Their spam filtering service (MEHS) can be had for just over $2/user from your local Microsoft partner/vendor.

Excited by this prospect, we signed one of our clients up for a free 30 day evaluation of the service.  There were some minor gotchas with it – such as some mail routing and strange mail logging issues in our pre-testing, but once we had it up and running it was quite pain free.

Most importantly, the customer was very happy, and their egos were no longer taking the hit from the constant e-mails offering to “enlarge their pen1s”.

Great!  At $2/user, this was a slam dunk.   Right?

When it came time to buy, things got REALLY fun.  First of all, our vendor couldn’t even get a call-back from Microsoft/Frontbridge to get the process started.  This was our vendors first sale (they were very eager to get our feedback, since this could be a fantastic service).  Of course, I wasted hours on the phone to keep the process rolling.  It took nearly 2 weeks to go from quote to sales order.

Then it got worse.  The gotcha that nobody knew about reared its head.
Currently Microsoft Exchange Hosted services are only available with a 3-year contract.  That’s right – 3 years.  This isn’t listed anywhere on Microsoft’s website, or in any of the pre-sales/evaluation information.

Okay Microsoft, what kind of crack  are you smoking.  No small business in their right mind should EVER sign a 3-year contract for technology.  It’s in their best interest to take a look at the service on an annual basis then renew.

Needless to say, I couldn’t recommend this to my clients.  It’s more than a bit ridiculous, and very disappointing.   I know I wouldn’t be buying enough seats to make a difference on my own, but it’s important that others looking for this kind of service be fully aware of what they’re getting into.

With Microsoft Exchange service pack 2, Microsoft has included IMF (Intelligent Mail Filtering) to help combat the legions of SPAM that plague our poor inboxes.  With this free tool, you’re getting what you pay for.  It’s simplistic and lacks many features that I would consider critical to a spam filtering solution (whitelisting, anyone??).  But it’s free, right?

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On Tuesday I spent the day at TNX: Exchange. TNX: Exchange was a full day event, hosted by Microsoft Technet, about their messaging applications and mobile workforce tools.

They covered some interesting areas – including using Sharepoint Services and Sharepoint Portal, Exchange 2003 (and SP2), Windows Mobile 5 and Live Communication Server. (more…)

On Monday afternoon, the building one of my clients is in lost power. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Their UPS would tell their servers to shut down, and all would be good. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Their UPS failed, and their Windows 2003 Small Business Server shut down in a rather dirty fashion.

Once power was restored, I managed to get into the machine and see what kind of damage was done. Normally, I wouldn’t have worried at all – but this client seems to have the worst luck when it comes to systems.

My worries were well proven. Exchange couldn’t mount the private message store. Some quick digging with ESEUtil showed that the store had shut down dirty (which it should have recovered from), but was missing one of the transaction log files.

Bad news. With that log file missing, it’s pretty unlikely to get the store mounted without some data loss. (more…)