Posts Tagged ‘Windows’

Exchange 2010 Installation – Management Shell Error

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

I was installing Exchange 2010 on a new Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine, but could not get past the installer’s system checks, receiving the follow error message:

[server.mydomain.local] Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the request. Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting requests. Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is the WinRM service, run the following command on the destination to analyze and configure the WinRM service: “winrm quickconfig”. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme….RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [], PSRemotingTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionOpenFailed

The error message itself has almost nothing to do with the actual cause of the problem. After a lot of Googling I found a post on the TechNet forums from someone who had the same error message, albeit caused by a different problem.

Eventually I figured out that the Server Manager feature installer wizard hadn’t installed the full selection of .NET 3.5.1 Features. After installing the entire sub-tree, the Exchange 2010 installation proceeded without any further problems.

Microsoft have now been kind enough to add automatic feature installation to the installer for Exchange Server 2010 SP1, which should help alleviate this kind of problem in future :)

Server Manager -> Features -> “.NET 3.5.1 Features”

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Using Group Policy Preferences to control multiple BGinfo scripts

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

I wanted to apply a different BGinfo-scripted background image as the wallpaper depending on what system a user was logging into, all using a single Group Policy.

This means that all servers are set to have a uniform background colour, but users on regular PCs are still be able to use any custom wallpaper on other computers without having to re-set it after each login.

While it is probably possible to create long-winded batch scripts to do what I wanted, it’s a lot easier to use the Group Policy Preferences (GPP) file options to control which BGinfo script is given to which systems.

One thing worth noting about GPP file control: I found that you have to use the “Replace” action rather than “Update” in Group Policy Preferences, as the targeted systems only update file attributes when using the “Update” action.

Step 1: BGinfo Scripts

  • Create the BGinfo scripts, and then put them in a network share that any authenticated user can access.
  • The BGinfo.exe file will also need to be in this share.

BGinfo Setup

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