Dead Server Walking
Yesterday we got a call from a partner who sells / installs digital multi-function machines (those nice big copier / printer / scanner / fax units) who ran into a networking issue with a customer where he was trying to install a new unit and asked for assistance. He claimed they had a Windows 2000 server and Win2k / XP workstations. So I met him at this client, and proceeded to figure out why this one Win2k workstation wouldn't see the network. Well, I find that I can successfully ping the router, but I'm unable to browse the network. I went back to the server to see if there was anything going on in the event logs. Well, there was stuff going on - but nothing that would pertain to this issue. So I grabbed the netbios name of the server while I was there, and went back to the problem PC to see if I had good name resolution. I'm not sure why, but I opted to see if I could get to the server's shares via Run | \\<servername> - well that worked. Just as I was closing that window, I noticed a share on this Win2k Server that caught my eye:
mspclnt
As everyone knows - that's the share for the ISA Firewall Client. Now, looking at the shape of this LAN and only 6 PCs - I seriously doubted that they had splurged for ISA. I went back to the server for a closer look - no SBS consoles or the like. Then I opened the Add/Remove Programs snap-in and sure enough, there it was: Microsoft Small Business Server.
Further investigation of the server & workstations revealed:
Two nics in the server - 192.168.1.1 & 192.168.1.2 - both plugged into the switch
All PCs configured with a static IP, using ISP's DNS servers
No forwarders in DNS snap-in (hence ICW never ran)
Only 2 PCs actually joined to the domain - 4 others in workgroup
Total of 3 workgroups on the network - (Snap Server in it's own?)
Snap Server not configured to use Windows domain authentication
All users accessing Snap Server via root credentials
Hodge-podge of A/V (whatever came on each PC - Norton here ... McAfee there ...)
And yes, it is a legal office :^) Luckily, we were able to step in just in time - someone had just about talked them into going with Merak Mail Server because “Exchange is only for big corporations” Wow . . . there's a convincing argument . . .
Anyway - after a quick clean-up of some basic settings (like DNS), this looks like it is actually going to turn into a new SBS2k3 deployment in the next couple of weeks . . . I've gotta remember to buy Dan (the copier guy) a beer :^)