Today we announced that Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate (RC) is available for download at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c6d27da1-ba2c-4570-a491-c0d7b39ede8b&displaylang=en 

(This link works...)

Some things to note:

· This version will coexist with Exchange 2003 and 2007.  In order to coexist with Exchange 2007 you will need the Exchange 2007 SP2 which will be released soon (later this month).

· You can do an in place upgrade from the RC version to the final (RTM) version.

· To see what is new in Exchange 2010 you can go here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298136(EXCHG.140).aspx

· Exchange 2010 can be installed on Windows 2008 SP2 or Windows 2008 R2.

I found this on the NTBUGTRAQ mailing list from a Michael Maloney.  I don't know the validity of this, but it seemed interesting enough to post.  I would be interested in hearing whether or not this works.

“With the release of Beagle.H and Beagle.I, virus writers started enclosing the infected files within password protected ZIP files. This negated the ability of A/V software to view the enclosed file within.

I've found that the A/V software does see the file within the ZIP archive, but cannot process it because it does not recognize the extension. When the archive is password protected, the file enclosed receives a "+" character at the end of the extension (ie test.exe becomes test.exe+) Since the A/V software doesn't recognize that kind of extension, it lets it pass thru.

When doing online backups of Exchange 2003 with SP1 you may not be successful and you may get the following in your application logs:

ID: 217
Source: ESE
Type: Error
Category: Logging/Recovery
Description:
Error -4001 During backup of a database location. The database will be unable to restore.

A new article has been posted about this here:
You cannot successfully perform an online backup information store databases on your Exchange Server 2003 SP1 computer, and event ID 217 is logged

This will update your ESE.dll to version 6.5.7232.54.

I found this article interesting because it was the first time that I had read (personally) where we recommended running "kill" against the information store instead of stopping all of the services.  This is mentioned in Method 1.  But then I read Method 2.  There your option is to do a defragmentation of your database.  If I had to choose between the two, I would go with Method 1 if I had a good backup from the day before.  You do check your backup logs daily right?  Yeah, I thought so...  Of course if you get this version of ESE on your machine you probably will not have this issue.

Recently I got asked (again) about running the Exchange System Manager (ESM) on Windows XP.  It works, but what if you use Outlook on the same machine?  It is officially unsupported.  Or to state it another way, if you have a problem with Outlook or the ESM and don't have the problem on a machine that doesn't have the other product installed, then we won't fix it.  After all, Outlook and Exchange aren't supported on the same machine:

266418 Microsoft does not support installing Exchange Server components and Outlook on the same computer
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=266418

So, what can you do?  Large companies often have helpdesk people that need to make changes to the mail attributes of users and they can't do that unless they have the ESM installed otherwise the tabs don't show up in the Active Directory Users and Computers (ADU&C), right?  Yeah, pretty much.  So what are the options? 

I asked around and here are the replies:

·        Microsoft's official recommendation is that your administrators connect to a Terminal server that has the tools you need installed. 

·        Another option is to run a Virtual PC on the Windows side that has the tools installed. 

·        The Enterprise solution for most companies however seems to be using third-party solutions (like web applications) to make the changes. 

·        Others look at the potential issues and have decided to just got ahead and do the unsupported.  It works for them.

The thing is that even in Exchange 5.5, the Admin.exe wasn’t officially supported on the desktop with Outlook as well, but most people did it.   Where Microsoft doesn't excel, the best solution often is an opportunity for our partners. 

What is your solution?  What are you doing to work around this?  I'm interested in what the majority of you are doing.  Email me or post below.  I'll post the results later.

Today, Microsoft posted some much awaited information about the steps that will be necessary for Exchange Server, the Operating System, Windows Mobile, and Outlook clients.  You can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx

The good news is that Windows Vista, Outlook 2007, and Exchange 2007 have the fixes in them.
The bad news is that chances are that you are not running any of those... 

The good news is that if you are running Exchange 2003 SP2 you can get a fix...  Soon.
The bad news is that if you are running Exchange 2003 SP1... you will need to go to SP2.  Ok, that probably is good news.
But...  If you have been holding off on installing some fixes because of the "Send As" changes, well...  We updated the store.exe on this fix and it includes the "Send As" fix, so you are going to want to get your users configured correctly if you haven't yet already.  See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912918/en-us for more information.

I kid about this because it is going to probably hurt.  I know that this will be somewhat painful for some of our larger customers.  Fortunately, it looks like the product groups have done some good work in getting this information together.  Please take a look at the first article for steps on how to make this as smooth as possible.