Home Forums Discussions Problems Trouble when upgrading to new server

We have a new Windows 2011 Essentials x64 server where we have loaded AC version 6.0.9. The AC database is located on this server. The non-Windows 7 workstation users will connect to the database without any problems but, the Windows 7 workstation users must be an Administrator on the Domain to connect. Obviously not desirable. Any suggestions? Worked well on old server, Windows Home Server. Not sure if it's a x64 problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

First, I have to say that this makes little sense and should be rather easy to fix. No computer should require a user to be a domain admin to connect to the database.

The first question is did you connect all of your computers to the domain using http://connect? If not, then there will be problems but should be with the others as well. But, they must be connected that way in order to work properly with Active Directory.

The other thing to consider is that WIN 7 OS have a significantly better and more intricate firewall than XP. This OS is usually controlled by Group Policy, but if not, and you can turn it off, I would.

Also, make sure that all antivirus programs are turned off especially suites such as McAfee and Symantec. If either of those are on the WIN 7's, don't just turn them off, remove them entirely. Of course, this is if the other computers don't have them.

You didn't say what all of the versions were of ALL of the OS. Are the WIN 7's Home or Pro, etc.?

Bert,

Thanks for your response. The computers are all running Win 7 professional that can't connect. I'll forward this to my computer guy.

David

OK, but make sure that AlL computers were connected with

http://connect

or you will be in for some huge errors, especially DNS

From my computer guru:

Yes, all workstations were connected to the domain via \\10.0.1.128\connect

Yes, the firewall is turned off on the server. When I was working with the AC tier 1 & 2 tech support teams, they were simultaneously logged into Nurse2, the Windows Essential server and Office4, over the course of three days we looked at every aspect of firewall issues, antivirus issues and domain group membership. It is true that with the server firewall turned on, the Windows 7 workstations will not connect to the AC database, so we turned it off. At one point we turned off every aspect of security on the Windows Essential server and still the only way a Windows 7 user accounts will connect to the AC database is for those user accounts to be an Administrator on the domain. I reexamined this last Saturday just to make sure we didn?t miss something obvious.

I thought about Group Policy. An existing Group Policy setting could be the culprit or, manipulating Group Policy could be the answer??

Thanks for your insight Bert!

David Lee, MD

Always look at group policy. But, unless all of the WIN 7s are in a different OU, then I don't see how.

Have you turned off the firewalls on WIN 7 or at least added AC or port 61067 on both TCP and UDP? Again, on a domain, you may not be able to turn off Windows Firewall, but you can make exceptions.

Also, and no one ever takes me up on this, but if you go to www.experts-exchange.com, you can get a free six day trial. If you don't get the answer from the experts using SBS 2011, Firwalls, WIN 7 and Networking; I will personally pay you $25.00.

I kinda want to take a look at this. PM me if that's okay with you.

David,

I am not sure how you are connecting to the domain. If that is the command you used, none of your computers would be on the domain. At least not correctly.

\\10.0.1.128\connect is a share name that would only work if there were a folder named "connect"

http://connect is a DNS Cname in the DNS management console under your domain which takes you to an asp (scripted) web page

The biggest problems you will have with DNS issues will be connectivity, and, if you have not joined your clients using http://connect which allows the scripted web page to run a wizard, you will have DNS issues forever.

My strong recommendation would be to take all of the computers off the domain and change them to workgroups. Once this is done, you will be able to join each computer to the domain correctly. Under the Computer Name tab in properties of My Computer, click change, then select Workgroup and use Workgroup or Home or whatever as the Workgroup name. Select OK, and it will need a username and password after which it will require a reboot.

Afterward, the following steps are not completely necessary, but I always do them anyway. This is for SBS 2003 and 2008, but should be the same for 2011.

Go to: C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server and delete the SBS folder.

Go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Small Business Server and delete that key.

Now, make SURE that your network settings are set for DHCP and is not set for static.

Now you are ready to connect to the domain.

Open an I.E. browser and type http://connect in the address field. This will open the web field, which is now easy to follow.

A few addresses below:

http://blog.ronnypot.nl/?p=593

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=fb9ed24b-0f5e-40c5-8683-5fc2773025ab

Check permissions on the Amazing Charts share.

Also, did your IT guy add the users using the SBS wizard or did he pull up Active Directory Users and Computers and add them himself?

JamesNT

James,

You aren't reading the posts. Especially mine. It is clear that they were not connected correctly if at all.

Apologies. It's late and I'm tired.

JamesNT

NP, lol. Plus you spent all your energy on the other thread with the VMs, etc.

David,

This does look a lot like either a DNS issue or a permissions issue (to borrow from James). You should go back to basic troubleshooting such as can you ping the folder and do ipconfig /all and "set" etc. Make sure they all have the same domain names if at all. I would start by making the share permission "Everyone" and the NTFS permissions "Everyone" and full control. Only temporarily, kind of like the firewalls. Everyone is never a good one to give full permissions to.

If you are on any network and you log in as a domain admin, you are credentialed to access any folder by default. It may be that given you are on a workgroup, users need to be credentialed to connect. Hard to tell from here.

Also, it is very nice for Sandeep to help in a PM, and you won't find many on here smarter, but everyone on these threads don't help because we get paid, we do it because we like helping. And, we all want to see the question progress so we can learn. It's also easier if all of us know what is going on. James will know your domain connection issues because of my post and your reply.

If you go off on a PM, it isn't really fair to James or anyone else who has given their time to help. If you do get your answer privately, please at least fill us in.

Alright. Now that it's 10:15am and I'm properly imbibed with the correct dosage of caffeine, let's take a second look at this thread.

The problem is that when using the Windows 7 workstation, the user must be a domain administrator to use Amazing Charts.

* This is not an x64 problem.

* We have verified that the Win7 machines are Professional. Excellent.

* At this point, I agree with Bert that these machines should be removed from the domain and rejoined using the procedure Bert gave you. One addendum to that - don't forget to go to the SBS box and remove the computer accounts using the SBS console. Once the machines are rejoined let us know if this problem still exists. If not, then something must have happened during the inital domain joining. If so, we have a repeatable problem and that should point to more clues.

JamesNT

All your help is invaluable. I will forward to my IT guy. I'll keep you updated. Thanks again.

David Lee, MD

From my IT guy:

In summary to what I have read so far? Bert is correct that IF we had not used the Windows SBS Essentials connector wizard to join to the domain this could cause this issue but, we did. In fact, because this connect wizard was used previously to join the workstations to the old Windows Home server, we had to uninstall this Home server connector first and restart the workstations before the Windows SBS Essentials connector would run from http://upg-server/connect. I have tried assigning these Windows 7 workstations static IPs, didn?t work. We spent several days with AC tier 1 & 2 technical support logged into the server and workstations troubleshooting folder permissions, firewall settings and on/off (the server firewall is currently off), nothing they tried worked so they gave up. JamesNT has a good point about creating user accounts via the SBS wizard. I did notice that they didn?t populate in the Dashboard as I expected. This is a quick and easy fix to try and I will try this fix this evening. Thanks for your input!

David

Going against my post to Sandeep, I would be more than happy to remote in to look around.

Progress!!!

The way we resolved the issue of the Windows 7 workstations not connecting to the AC database was to navigate to the AC database file within the AC folder, right click to open the database Properties, click on the Security tab, add Everyone to the Permissions and grant Full control. We had granted folder permissions, but not database permissions.

Unfortunately, now we are getting an error that AC wants to download and install a file called HL7.msi. Any ideas what this is???

By the way Bert, thanks so much for your offer. If I had any hair, I was about to pull it all out trying to figure this out. Very nice of you.

David