Windows Server 2008 R2 and CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT STOP errors

If you've got a Windows Server 2008 R2 box, running Nehalem based hardware you might find it handy to bookmark KB975530, which details a hotfix and workaround for CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT STOP errors you might receive with this configuration.

The Virtual PC Guy (Ben Armstrong) has a few more details on the problem.

Weave

I've become pretty used to loosing my bookmarks, addons and anything else stored in the browser over the last few years that I've pretty much trained myself to assume that whatever computer I'm next using will be blank. For this reason I've relied on pinned stuff in Bloglines for several years and my crazy accurate memory. However moving away from Bloglines was pretty problematic for this reason and I've started using bookmarked stuff again.

I spied Weave getting the 1.0b1 treatment and figured it would be interesting to try out. Turns out that it's actually pretty good, once you get everything setup, and even better theres a "server" component that you can run yourself. After all who really trusts the cloud not to go away?

The realy nice feature is that unlike the various other extensions for doing the same thing you can also sync history, tabs, preferences and saved form inputs, if you're into that sort of thing. The tabs feature seemed interesting, but for me it was just confusing as buggery as I tend to use my laptop and PC for totally different types of web surfing.

Slow Relaying with Microsoft Exchange 2010

If you've got an application that sends messages via your Exchange 2010 server, using SMTP, you might've noticed that things have slowed down a bit. The reason for this is because the Exchange 2010 receive connectors have a "MaxAcknowledgementDelay" setting, that will inform you if the delivery is successful, within a certain time frame. If the timelimit is hit, it then acks the submission.

To disable this you can set your receive connector not to use this feature: Set-ReceiveConnector "Connector Name" -MaxAcknowledgementDelay 0

Further details are available on technet.

MAPI communication with Exchange 2010

If you're having fun with a pre-2007 version of Outlook, or any non-Microsoft product trying to talk MAPI to an Exchange 2010 server you might be interested in knowing that the defaults have now changed in the new version, and it expects traffic to be encrypted. This caught us out today as we'd only tested Outlook 2007 before rolling one of our boxes over to 2010 over the weekend.

Two options;

  1. Disable the encryption requirement, although this isn't recommended Set-RpcClientAccess –identity SERVERNAME –EncryptionRequired $false
  2. Enable encryption for the MAPI connection (for Outlook 2003 this is under the More Settings, Security tab)

Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm at Bristol

Sunday night, thanks to the magic of the Ents24 iPhone application, I had the privilege of seeing Paul and Storm followed by Jonathan Coulton at Bristol's newest venue, The Tunnels. Holy crap was it awesome, and I'm glad I went.

The venue was great, although a little small, I would happily recommend that you go there if someone interesting is playing. Just watch out for the 430-ish super bright, sound activated, LED array behind the stage.

Unfortunately the iPhone sucks so much as a camera, and I have no useful shots of anything other than darkness and aforementioned blinding light. It's the first time I genuinely wish that I still had a proper digital camera.

I'm also a little hoarse today after singing along. Although it might equally be some sort of nasty cold..