Windows Tips & Tricks UPDATE--November 7, 2005

Windows Tips &amp Tricks UPDATE, November 7, —brought to you by the Windows IT Pro Network and the Windows 2000 FAQ site
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FAQs

Q. How can I check the password of the IUSR and IWAM local accounts on a machine?
Q. How can I grant a user access to someone else's mailbox in Microsoft Outlook?
Q. How can I use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to grant a user access to someone else's mailbox?
Q. How can I enable logging of user access to another user's mailbox?
Q. What's new in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2)?

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FAQs

by John Savill, FAQ Editor, [email protected]

Q. How can I check the password of the IUSR and IWAM local accounts on a machine?

A. Usually the IUSR_<machine name> and IWAM_<machine name> passwords are set automatically and are never known. However, I've seen cases in which for some reason the passwords get out of sync or corrupted and need to be reset. The easiest way to reset these passwords is to extract the passwords that Microsoft IIS has in its metabase and update the accounts in Local Users and Groups to use that password.

You first need to update the adsutil.vbs script, which you'll find in the AdminScripts folder under the Inetpub folder, to display sensitive information (e.g., passwords) instead of just asterisks. Open the adsutil.vbs file in Notepad and search for the text "IsSecureProperty = True", replace this text with "IsSecureProperty = False" and save the file. Now run the following commands to return the passwords (/anonymoususerpass is the IUSR account; /wamuserpass is the IWAM_ account).

C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts>cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/anonymoususerpass

anonymoususerpass : (STRING) "/XEv`J01T"!69I"

C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts>cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/wamuserpass

wamuserpass : (STRING) "ikI37Q"W5\[,uu%"

If you want to reset the passwords to match the passwords you had already set in Local Users and Groups, use the following command:

C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts>cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/anonymoususerpass "Pa55word"

anonymoususerpass : (STRING) "Pa55word"

C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts>cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/wamuserpass "Pa55word"

wamuserpass : (STRING) "Pa55word"

You should now run the command below to sync the password from IIS with Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and component services:


C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts>cscript.exe synciwam.vbs -v

IIS Applications Defined:
Name, AppIsolated, Package ID

You should now restart IIS via the "All Tasks" context menu option of the IIS server in the MMC Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager snap-in.

Q. How can I grant a user access to someone else's mailbox in Microsoft Outlook?

A. You can grant a user access to another user's mailbox by performing the following steps:

Log on to Outlook as the user who owns the mailbox and select Options from the Tools menu.
Select the Delegates tab.
Click Add.
You'll see a list of users who can be given access to the mailbox. Select the user or users to whom you want to delegate access and click Add, as the figure shows. Click OK.
Now select the rights that this delegated user has. By default, users are given only Calendar and Tasks access, but you can give access to other areas (e.g, Inbox, Contacts) at different levels (e.g., Reviewer, Author, Editor) as the figure shows. Notice you can also select the option to send the delegate an email message confirming the access level and the option that sets whether the delegate can see items marked private. Click OK.
Click OK to the main Options dialog box.

Q. How can I use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to grant a user access to someone else's mailbox?

A. In the FAQ " How can I grant a user access to someone else's mailbox in Microsoft Outlook?" I explain how to use Outlook to delegate access to another user's mailbox. You can also use Active Directory Users and Computers to perform this delegation. To do so, perform these steps:

Start the Exchange Server version of the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
Right-click the user who owns the mailbox to which you want to grant access by another user and select Properties from the displayed context menu.
Select the "Exchange Advanced" tab.
Click Mailbox Rights.
Click Add and select the user to whom you want to give access. Click OK.
Select the new user and clear the "Delete mailbox storage" check box. Select either "Read permissions" or "Full mailbox access" as the figure shows. Click OK.
Click OK to the user object's Properties dialog box.

The big difference between this method for granting mailbox access and the method that uses Outlook is that with this method, the user has no idea that someone else has access to their mailbox. However, this method could have legal ramifications. Privacy laws are very strict.

Q. How can I enable logging of user access to another user's mailbox?

A. If you've delegated permissions so that a user can open another user's mailbox and you want to audit this type of activity, you need to enable at least a minimum level of diagnostic logging. To do so, perform these steps:

Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Exchange System Management snap-in.
Expand your administrative group until your Exchange server is displayed in the navigation tree (Administrative Groups - Servers).
Right-click the Exchange server and select Properties.
Select the "Diagnostics Logging" tab.
Under Services select MSExchangeIS - Mailbox.
In the Categories section select Logons and set logging level to Minimum, as the figure shows. Click OK.
Click OK.
Restart the Information Store service for the change to take effect. (This will cause a mail outage, so schedule this restart appropriately.)

Now when a user accesses another user's mailbox, an event ID 1016 is written to the Application event log that shows who accessed which mailbox, as the figure shows. In the FAQ " How can I trigger an action to be performed when certain Windows events occur?" (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/46008/46008.html ), I explained how to use Eventtriggers to trigger actions based on certain event logs. You could therefore use a trigger to activate an action based on event ID 1016 in the Application event log. For example, to start a script called mailboxaccess.vbs use this command:


C:\>eventtriggers /create /tr "Non-Owner Mailbox Access" /eid 1016 /l application /tk c:\scripts\mailboxaccess.vbs

The mailboxaccess.vbs script can contain any actions that you desire (e.g., send an email, page someone).

Q. What's new in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2?)

A. Exchange 2003 SP2 is available from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/downloads/2003/sp2/download.mspx and offers the following new features:

Improvements to mobile clients. New Email, Calendar, Contact and Task notifications are directly pushed via an HTTP connection to devices with improved data compression. New policies exist that, if a mobile device is lost or misplaced, a local wipe will be performed after a defined number of incorrect logon attempts, thus preventing unauthorized users from getting access to private information. You can also initiate a remote wipe when needed, rendering the device "as new" with no data. A video is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/_assets/video/teched/final-mobilityv7-2mbps.wvx that shows some of the new mobile functionality.
Improved spam protection. SP2 includes an updated Intelligent Message Filter (IMF), as well as support for the new Sender ID email authentication protocol.
New maximum mailbox store size (up to 75GB)
New offline address book format
The ability to force remote clients to use cache mode
More granular Public Folder replication and permissions management, which includes not allowing a replica of a public folder to be deleted while there is unreplicated data
Support for Novell GroupWise 6.x connectors and migration tools

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