[Today's post comes to us courtesy of  Roderick White and Shawn Sullivan]

By design, user accounts that do not belong to the Windows SBS Fax Administrators group are not able to manage the SBS 2008 Fax queue from the Windows XP Fax Console. This is due to the enhanced fax security configuration in Windows 2008, which requires you to create a fax account through Windows Fax and Scan on Vista or Windows7 before managing the queue. This option is not available for Windows XP. However, users will still be able to send a fax from XP using applications such Notepad, Word, and Outlook.

You can expect the following behavior when opening the Windows XP Fax Console as a domain user:

• An “All fax printers are inaccessible” error is displayed at the bottom right.
• No options to manipulate fax are available from the Menu Bar.
• No faxes are displayed in the Incoming, Inbox, Outbox, or Sent Items folders.
• A connection error is shown under Tools > Fax Printer Status

You can verify that you still have the ability to send a fax by doing the following:

1. Open notepad and type a test message.
2. Select File > Print > Select <Fax on Server> and select Print
3. Complete the Send Fax Wizard
4. Verify at the remote site that the fax was received successfully.
5. You can also open Windows Fax and Scan on SBS 2008, Vista, or Windows7 as Administrator after creating a fax account to verify the fax was sent. For more information on this, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346633(WS.10).aspx

We recommend that you do not change the default security configuration for SBS 2008 Fax Service. However, if decommissioning Windows XP is not an option and you require ability for users to manage and send faxes from the XP Fax Console, you can take the following action:

1. Click Start > Administrative Tools > Fax Services Manager
2. Right-click on the Fax(Local) select Properties
3. Select the Security Tab, you will have two options:
   1. Select the Individual Domain User and give both Fax and Manage Fax Documents permission. 
      
      
      
   2. Select the Windows SBS Fax Users group and add the Manage Fax Documents permission. User accounts created by the SBS 2008 console will be members of this group by default. 
      
      

Note: User accounts that have Manage Fax Document permission will now have the same experience in the XP Fax console that they would in Windows Fax and Scan. Besides the ability to send fax, they will also see all unassigned faxes within the Inbox and see only faxes that they have sent in the Outbox and Sent Items.

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of  John Bay, Richard Pulliam and Damian Leibaschoff]

When you connect to a share hosted on SBS 2003 from a Windows 7 client joined to the domain and you select “Restore previous versions” or the “Previous Versions” tab under properties of the share/folder, you get a view that shows snapshots with the incorrect time, with share names missing and that cannot be restored. if you open the contents of the snapshot you notice that you are actually viewing the CURRENT contents of the network share and NOT the stored contents of the shadow copy snapshot that is stored on the server.

This is the experience when opening the Previous Versions of a share:

And this is a sample when opening the properties of a folder inside the network share:

As mentioned before, Copy and Restore do not work as expected. Furthermore, opening the contents, shows a view of the current content.

Resolution

To correct this issue, you have to remove the following registry value from your SBS 2003 server:

Before editing the registry make sure you have a working system state backup of the server.

1. On your SBS 2003 server, open REGEDIT and navigate to the following location:
   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\Parameters
2. Right click on parameters and select Export.
3. Once the export is completed, find the entry for DisableDownLevelTimewarp, select it and then delete it.

After deleting the mentioned key, re-test accessing the Previous Versions from your Windows 7 client. You should see the expected functionality of being able to access the existing shadow copy snapshots.

If you have XP clients, you need to make sure they have Service Pack 3 installed.

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Damian Leibaschoff]

In the coming weeks you will notice that the SBS 2008 media will now include Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2. This change will help improve the reliability of the newly deployed SBS servers, while at the same time, providing savings in terms of deployment time.

Other updates included with this release:

• OneCare for Small Business trial version is no longer included. Setup options and integration have been removed.
  • Since the original launch of SBS 2008, the OneCare line of products has been replaced by Microsoft Security Essentials. This is a free download that is not designed for business environments, we will keep you posted on any future options for your SBS environment.
• New Migration Preparation Tool  (SourceTool).
  • In Join Domain (Migration) setup scenarios, the SBS 2008 setup will pause if it has detected that the Source Tool has not been completed successfully on the domain being joined.

The new Migration Preparation Tool (SourceTool)

This new tool is designed to be run on ANY type of source domain controller, not only SBS 2003. You should run this tool on the source domain controller that will be used in the migration. It is also mandatory to complete the installation and execution of the tool on the source domain for the SBS 2008 setup to continue past the pre-requirement checks. The tool itself still performs the same tasks as before, mainly these 4 tasks on the source domain (as needed based on the presence of SBS or not):