Monthly Archives: May 2011

When trying to use Remote Web Workplace on an SBS 2008 server you get error: (error 50331688)

Recently came across this problem on a SBS 2008 deployment (just missed the SBS 2011 release), where users who were trying to connect to their computers using the Remote Web Workplace, but were unable and were getting this error:

An internal error has occurred (error 50331688). For more information, please
contact your network administrator or Microsoft Product Support.

Turns out the problem is related to the Terminal Services Gateway not having a certificate configured.

To resolve this follow these steps:

  1. Open TS Gateway Manager MMC
  2. Select your server in the Left hand pane
  3. In the Middle pane, click “View or modify certificate properties”
  4. Click “Select an existing Certificate for SSL encryption (recommended)”
  5. Click “Browse Certificates….”
  6. Select the correct 3rd party certificate from the list, and then click “Install”
  7. Click “Apply”, and then try to connect via RWW again.

This should also resolve any issues you have when trying to connect in via RDP when using a Terminal Services Gateway.

Enable the hidden Remote Desktop Gateway Manager MMC snap-in SBS 2011

For whatever reason, the Remote Desktop Gateway Manager MMC Snap-in is disabled in SBS 2011 by default. For those of you who want to edit the TS CAPs and RAPs you can re-enable the snap in by entering the following command in the command prompt as an administrator:

dism /online /Enable-Feature:Gateway-UI

Note: It’s not recommended to install the remote Desktop Gateway Role on an SBS 2011 server, It’s already installed as a component of SBS 2011 and configured to work with the Remote Web Access site.

Outlook 2010 running on Windows 7 locks up when trying to access a .PST on a network share

You may also notice that windows explorer also locks up when trying to work with the same .pst files, even when not using Outlook.

We’ve been seeing this a lot lately. Outlook 2010 on Windows 7, mostly x86, locks up completely when trying access .pst files that have been placed into re-directed My Documents folders. We used to do this a lot for folks back when we were running XP/2003, and although it was never officially supported by Microsoft, it worked out pretty well. After all who wants to lose locally stored archive files when a PC’s hard drive dies? Not me that’s for sure, which is why it makes sense to stick them out on a network share somewhere. Because email is private you don’t want to be sticking these files out where just anyone can grab them so we ended up just placing them into re-directed My Documents folders, the permissions were already in place and it just made sense. Flash forward, and now we’re upgrading PCs(well replacing actually) to Windows 7 and all of a sudden we’ve got lots of users unable to access their archive files.

The problem appears to be in Windows 7’s offline folders functionality. There are two solutions that we’ve come up with so far:

1) Disable offline folders for the affected PCs.

2) Move the .pst files to another share, and disable caching on that share. The only problem with this is when users are disconnected from the share they’ll get error messages in outlook saying that it can’t access the archive files.

I wish I had a better solution at this point but I don’t. I’ll update again if I can figure out a better way to solve this, feel free to throw your suggestions at me if you’ve got something that works and is more flexible.