App-Domain could not be created. Error: 0x80131902

Failed to execute request because the App-Domain could not be created. Error: 0x80131902
Event-ID: 1088
Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0

I was getting this error in Event Viewer while trying to run a web app. This was fresh install of IIS, but on an older server. The problem is that after IIS is installed you need to re-install the .Net framework.

Step one is to un-install the .Net framework.

• Open a Command Prompt
• run "net stop w3svc"
• cd %windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\
• run "aspnet_regiis.exe -ua"
• run "aspnet_regiis.exe -i "
• run "net start w3svc"

aspnet_regiis.exe -r may have worked instead of the two step uninstall / reinstall based on it's discription but I didn't try that option.

Handy Microsoft related blogs

Over time I have found some Microsoft team web sites to be very handy. These include the Microsoft Exchange Team, the IIS team and most recently the Open Source Software lab team. Below I have the links to these sites so you can check them out and add them to your favorites.

Port 25 The Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft

Microsoft Exchange Team Blog (You had me at EHLO...)

Microsoft Internet Information Services Homepage
Also if you have sites that you find useful please leave them in the comments so I can addt them.

Prism: Web apps running as Local apps

Today I downloaded and installed Mozilla Lab's Prism. It allows you to run web apps such as Facebook, Gmail, Google Calendar, or even Spiceworks as if it where a local application. It is a slimmed down Mozilla web browser that creates a nifty shortcut for you to use. You can then resize and move the window around as you would any other window.



It best feature is the lack of an address bar. It sounds weird but that can sometime be a big distraction. So now I can have my gmail open and my Calendar open all day long.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Catchall Agent

For those of you looking to implement a Catchall agent in Microsoft Exchange 2007 I finally have an answer for you! CatchAllAgent Exchange2007 Transport Protocol Agent does everything I needed it to do. It can handle multiple domains and supports standard .Net tracing for troubleshooting. Granted I didn't write it but it is simple to set up and configure.

The download is not as straight forward as I would have liked (multiple files vs. a Zip file) but the instructions are clear and consise for installation. The bare minimum you need to download is the CatchAllAgent.dll, config.xml, and Readme.txt. The author has included the source code for the CatchAllAgent incase you want to see how it works or if you have enhancements to make. The one issue I had with installation was due to me not reading ALL of the instructions and missing a step ([PS] C:\catchallagent>enable-transportagent "CatchAll Agent").

There are many reasons to NOT have a catchall agent setup. For one you open yourself up to a Denial of Service attack because all email will now be accepted for your domain, which may also lead to the servers storage being filled. But when the CIO and CEO both say we NEED a catchall I fulfill their request and warn them of the dangers. Hopefully I never have to say "I told you so!"

Testing Outlook Web Access from the PowerShell

As any of my readers know I check things on a daily basis, typically in the morning. As part of these checks I fire up Internet Explorer 7 and go to our Outlook Web Access page and log in.

Today I figured out how to do all of this from a PowerShell, which has already cut my daily monitoring duties down about 90%. This is a pretty simple oneliner that will test one OWA url. It does however require you to enter a password in a dialog box.

Test-OWAConnectivity -url https://mail.yourdomain.com/owa -mailboxcredentials:)Get-Credential domail\user)

After you run that it will ask you for the password of the user and report back success or failure.

Spiceworks 1.7 Now Available

Spiceworks 1.7 is now available for download. The upgrade process is as painless as can be. Simply right click on the spiceworks tray icon and select restart. When the restart process is finished you will have the newest version.

Using the Powershell to check for mounted mailbox databases

If you want to quickly check to see what mailbox databases are mounted (or not mounted) there is a simple command that you can run from the Exchange Management Shell.

Get-Mailboxdatabase -status | where {$_.Mounted -eq $true}

To see what mailboxdatabaes are not mounted you can do:
Get-Mailboxdatabase -status | where {$_.Mounted -eq $false}

Let's break down what is going on here.
Get-MailboxDatabase will generally just return the list of mailbox databases in the organization.
The -Status switch will tell the command to get the status (Mounted, Last Full backup, et cetera).
We then pipe this into the where command to do the searching. The variable we are looking for here is Mounted and we need it to be equal (-eq) to True ($true).