Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Offcat Troubleshooting Tool

If you have exhausted with troubleshooting any client related issues within your system or end up troubleshooting crashing or any other issues related to MS OFFICE use the offcat tool which would scan and let you know what is missing on the existing office software on your machine.

You can download the tool and guide from the following link https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36852

This Tool works with below software’s and Clients

Supported Operating System
Windows 10 , Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2
This download works with the following Microsoft Office products:

Microsoft Office 2016 (32-bit or 64-bit, Click-to-run or MSI installs)
Microsoft Office 2013 (32-bit or 64-bit, Click-to-run or MSI installs)
Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit or 64-bit)
Microsoft Office 2007

OffCAT 2.1 provides scanning for the following Office programs:

Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft InfoPath
Microsoft OneDrive for Business
Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Skype for Business
Microsoft Visio
Microsoft Word
The following minimum version of the Microsoft .NET Framework is required:
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.5

Short excerpt from the document to show how it works

Scan more than one Office Program

To scan more than one Office program, simply click on each tile for the programs you want scanned. The following figure indicates Excel,
, and Publisher from Office 2016 will be scanned when the Click to scan control is clicked.



The difference between a single program scan and a multiple-program scan is the intermediate prompt that occurs when all the scans are finished. Continuing with the above example where Excel, Outlook and Publisher are scanned in the same scan, the following figure shows the prompt to select which scan you want displayed first in the REPORT page.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Frontend Service in Lync server 2013 - SBS/SBA does not start

IssueOne of my SBS/SBA server was down unexpectedly and dint start FE service. Rebooted server to bring the services back online but that dint help - All services were back to online but FE service stays on " STARTING" state.  When see events we see following events Lync server event.
----------------------------------------------------
Log Name:      Lync Server
Source:        LS User Services
Date:          6/12/2016 3:45:41 AM
Event ID:      32174
Task Category: (1006)
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      sbstest.contoso.com
Description:
Server startup is being delayed because fabric pool manager has not finished initial placement of users.

Currently waiting for routing group: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.
Number of groups potentially not yet placed: 2.
Total number of groups: 2.
Cause: This is normal during cold-start of a Pool and during server startup.
If you continue to see this message many times, it indicates that insufficient number of Front-Ends are available in the Pool.
 ---------------------------------------------------- 

In Application Events I dint find any event related to WinFabric or crashing , so Expanded the " Evenviewer >> Applications and Services Logs >> Microsoft >> Windows >> Windows Fabric >> Admin"



















By default logs would be in disable mode, you need to Right click and Enable log to see logs. Restart FE service and see if you can find any logs, in my scenario I found below logs.

 ----------------------------------------------------
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-WindowsFabric/Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-WindowsFabric
Date:          6/12/2016 3:25:48 AM
Event ID:      16385
Task Category: Reliability
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      None
User:          NETWORK SERVICE
Computer:      sbstest.contoso.com
Description:
FM resolving failed with FABRIC_E_SERVICE_OFFLINE
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
     <Execution ProcessID="2120" ThreadID="7424" />
    <Channel>Microsoft-Windows-WindowsFabric/Admin</Channel>
    <Computer>sbstest.contoso.com</Computer>
    <Security UserID="S-1-5-20" />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="id">9524af707cc4d78cc1e0174c6e9009</Data>
    <Data Name="type">FMLocation</Data>
    <Data Name="text">FM resolving failed with FABRIC_E_SERVICE_OFFLINE</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>
 ----------------------------------------------------

To make sure if win fabric is active or not I selected following counter to check the status of the winfabric. ( below screenshot I have copied from the following TechNet https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/nexthop/2016/03/18/get-cspoolupgradereadinessstate-showing-not-ready-or-busy/  which was written by ANAS Bhai, Thank you Anas bhai for your support)





















Found the counter " Usrv - Whether server is connected to fabric pool manager" which shows the value as zero  ( 0.00 ) which means the Fabric is not active. Healthy fabric would show the value as "1.00"  Thought of something wrong with fabric and targeted to fix it fabric first.

Executed following steps

1. I have stopped all Lync Services including Windows Fabric service in SBS Server.

2. Disabled automatic startup for all "Lync Server 2013" services using Windows PowerShell

 Get-Service –DisplayName “Lync Server*” | Set-Service –StartupType Disabled

3. Removed Fabric Component from the following location " Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features >> manually uninstall Windows Fabric " ( Before you uninstall the winfabric make a note of the winfabric version - if you have installed lesser or higher version winfabric may not function as desire and may not start services )

4. Manually deleted fabric files under below locations:

"C:\ProgramFiles\Windows Fabric folder and all subfolders"
"C:\ProgramData\Windows Fabric folder and all subfolders"

5. Rebooted the computer - ( Note: If you don't reboot the server winfabric installation will be failed when you bootstrap for reinstalling winfabric )

6. Executed Step2 from the deployment wizard which would Bootstrap to install Windows Fabric -by default bootstrapper installs RTM Version once it installed I have applied latest CU as well.

7. Ran latest April 2016 CU - LyncServerUpdateIhnstaller and updated the Fabric to Latest CU

8. Enabled automatic startup for all Lync Server 2013 services using Windows PowerShell
Get-Service –DisplayName “Lync Server*” | Set-Service –StartupType Automatic

9. Verified services - by this time services back to online healthy.





10. Verified the winfabric status in performance counters - Value set to  '1.00' - so winfabric back to healthy and my server services also back to healthy :) 


Your valuable feedback on this article is most appreciated

Regards, Rajukb
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Does the current E5 License replace the enterprise customer's PBX ?


I love the way the Microsoft progressing to capture Skype for business / Lync Online customers, One of the great features which Microsoft giving for cloud users is supporting cloud PBX.

Though the current cloud PBX only support's basic PSTN calling features such as call hold and transfer which would really helpful for the small and midsize business customers.

At this point, no support for Common area phones, Response groups and analogue phone and E.911 support hope MS will add these features soon.


Regards, Rajukb
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.