Fax Server Options

Written by Daniel Mundy on Tuesday, 25 May 2010 15:54.

Most of my clients have a fax machine in their office. It requires a dedicated analog (not digital!) phone line, but this is usually shared with the ADSL internet connection. For the most part, this setup works very reliably.

It starts to fall apart when you have an office that receives several hundred pages per day. If they have a legal requirement to keep records of everything, this gets even harder.

There are some options.

Fax Service in Small Business Server

I've never set up the fax service in Small Business Server but have looked into it.

The main concern is the actual hardware. I had one client who was using the fax service in Small Business Server 2003. They had a cheap USB modem and receiving faxes was very unreliable. Their response? "It has always worked before". Thankfully they are no longer a client.

I did some research and the following modems are recommended for use in a fax server:

MT5656ZDX has been confirmed to work with SBS 2008
MT5600ZDX has been confirmed to work with SBS 2003 (no confirmation about SBS 2008 yet)
MT5600ZBA has been confirmed to work with SBS 2003 (no confirmation about SBS 2008 yet)

What if I'm running SBS under Hyper-V?

The actual hardware will not be visible to a Hyper-V guest OS. Therefore you will need to look into Ethernet to Serial converters... Be careful about reliability, can you guarantee it? If clients start getting dropped faxes here and there, they will blame you for suggesting that it will work.

There is one by Fabulatech, but I've heard that it can be flakey.

There's also the Moxa NPort series, with local sales and support offered through TriStar Automation.

Fax Gateway Service

Depending on volume, a fax to email gateway service may be a more sensible option. There's no hardware investment required, no line rental, and availability is someone else's problem.

The following are some Australian fax gateway providers that have been recommended to me:

http://bbpglobal.com/aust/fax2email.php - inbound only
http://www.faxmate.com.au/
http://www.utbox.net/fax/plan-pricing

I've used utbox for very low volume faxing, it seems to work well.

Logo Disappears when Emailing Invoices in MYOB

Written by Daniel Mundy on Sunday, 23 May 2010 15:04.

You may have a logo on your invoice form in MYOB. You may print that invoice and it shows up as expected. But if you email the logo, it will not work unless you have QuickTime installed. Don't ask me why.

Terminal Server Recommended Configuration

Written by Daniel Mundy on Saturday, 22 May 2010 16:33.

This is how I configure my terminal servers.

Disabled Internet Explorer Enhanced Configuration Mode
Install User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (note there isn't a 64bit version, but apparently there is one in beta)
I am starting to play with ThreadMaster, which adds QOS to the CPU, ie stopping a single application from consuming too much processor time. Read about it here and download it here.
Only domain admins are a member of the builtin administrators group
Policies to restrict playing around

There is more I do, this is a work in progress. I'd love to know any little trick you have when configuring terminal servers, please leave a comment in the form below.

Slipstream Windows Service Packs and Updates

Written by Daniel Mundy on Friday, 21 May 2010 17:46.

Windows XP SP3

To Extract the SP3 files, type:

windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe -x:c:\sp3

More Info:

Windows XP Unattended Install

Written by Daniel Mundy on Thursday, 20 May 2010 16:04.

You can edit the file CD:\i386\winnt.sif to automatically enter CD key, accept EULA, etc. See MSFN for available options. Make an ISO of your Windows XP CD using UltraISO, and then extract the winnt.sif file, edit it, and insert the file back into the ISO.

After you have a PC imaged you'll need to use Sysprep to create a unique SID. At this stage the PC is ready to be imaged, or a snapshot taken in your VM before copying it.

Slipstream Office Service Packs and Updates

Written by Daniel Mundy on Thursday, 20 May 2010 09:53.

Slipstream SP3 into Office 2003

Default Group Memberships in SBS 2003

Written by Daniel Mundy on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 11:00.

Builtin Groups

Group Name	Members
Account Operators	MyBusiness\Security Groups\Domain Power Users
Administrators	Users\Administrator, Users\Domain Admins, Users\Enterprise Admins
Backup Operators	MyBusiness\Users\SBSUsers\Backup User
Distributed COM Users
Guests	Users\Domain Guests, Users\Guest, Users\IUSR_SERVERNAME
Incoming Forest Trust Builders
Network Configuration Operators
Performance Log Users	NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Performance Monitor Users
Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access	Users\Exchange Domain Servers
Print Operators	MyBusiness\Security Groups\Domain Power Users
Remote Desktop Users	MyBusiness\Security Groups\Remote Operators
Replicator
Server Operators
Terminal Server License Servers
Users	NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users, Users\Domain Users, NT AUTHORITY\INTERACTIVE
Windows Authorization Access Group	NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS

Event 3005 from source ServerActiveSync

Written by Daniel Mundy on Tuesday, 18 May 2010 10:18.

I receive the following error on two servers I manage. Both servers have been through a swing migration, but I haven't pin-pointed whether this is the problem yet. Client A is using Windows Mobile phones only, and was using these before the migration, unfortunately I'm not sure whether the error messages were present before the migration. Client B is using iPhones only, but they were not set up before the migration.

Log: Application
Type: Error
Event: 3005
Source: ServerActiveSync
Description: Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [sbs.test.local] User: [
 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 ] HTTP status code: [503]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.

The phones all seem to synchronise without any issues.

An article suggests checking the ExchangeVDir in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MasSync\Parameters is set to /exchange-oma rather than ExchDAV, but I checked this and it was already set correctly.

If anyone knows what this is, please lease a comment!

Event 4015 and 4004 from Source DNS

Written by Daniel Mundy on Monday, 17 May 2010 13:18.

These errors started appearing on my test SBS 2003 server which only gets Windows Updates and doesn't have any workload or applications installed. A few resolutions that may be possible are below

A few things to try

From a newsgroup post: "If you have installed AD using Dcprom , the dcpromo create the .(root) zone and when you need to use the forwords option as Microsoft recommendation for Internet names resolution you will always get the 4004 & 4015 errors in your log. To solve this problem and stop these events do the following:
1. Create a .(root) zone file
2. Right click the .(root) name and select Properties
3. Change the zone into a primary zone instead of the integrated AD zone type
4. Delete the .(root) zone"

From a newsgroup post: "If the 4004 and 4015 events only appear at start up, you get these events because your zones are stored in AD and you only have one Domain Controller. AD cannot start with DNS, and when DNS starts, because AD has not started, DNS cannot load the zones in AD. The error goes away if you have two or more DCs with DNS installed, or if you use standard primary zones".

In one case, this happened on a Windows 2003 SP1 computer, which was a domain controller with Active Directory integrated zones, where the DNS Server address had defaulted to 127.0.0.1. Five of these Event IDs were preceded by EventID 4004 from source DNS.
Changing the DNS server address did not solve the problem. DNS was uninstalled and reinstalled (go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components -> Networking Services) without an intervening restart of the computer. The DNS Server was then checked and minor configuration changes made. The computer was restarted and EventID 4004 or 4015 did not reappear.