THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

Sometimes I get emails about someone having a problem with say.... OMA and RWW or OWA or whatever and they are unsure of how to go about fixing things without a total reinstall of SBS.

First off, It's my opinion that unless you get a virus, trojan or other security intrusion there is no need to reinstall a box.

So let's discuss some ways of troubleshooting shall we?

• First off.... when did it last work?
• What did you do between then and now? 

Now then this is where the rules in the Susan book of Admin-ing comes into play: 

Know thy system.

It's absolutely imperative that keep an eye on what's going on in your network. From looking at the daily 6 a.m. email, to knowing what got installed on your box, knowing your system is key.

The exact error message

Want to know my secret?  Google.  Hands down a search engine is how I know things.  These days I even google my own blog.  Just today in fact I was looking for the phone number to the Cingular data support toll free number and I knew I had blogged it so I googled my own blog to find it.  Copying down the “EXACT” error message and sticking in Google, Google groups is how you can find a lot of things.

Look for the events, the logs, the errors

I've joked that the Devs at the SBS development must have been beancounters in a past life, because they leave audit trails all over the place.  Scroll down in this page and you'll see what I mean.  Subscribe to www.eventid.net as a place to point you in the right direction.

And above all else......

When you get stuck, ask for advice

Don't bang your head on the wall, use your resources wisely.  There are issues that I will post to newsgroups, and then there are those issues that I will call Product support about.  Anne today points to an article about Support resources.  Use 'em.