adminpak.msi in .NET RC2 under XP

[SoulAssassin]

Has anyone used the adminpak.msi (Administrative Tools) in .NET RC2 under WinXP? As an NT admin who's running XP on my local desktop I'm forced to use the adminpak from .NET RC1 to manage AD and such. Just wondering if anyone is using the RC2 tools on XP and any feedback, fixes, problems. If so, does anyone have a direct link to the files so I can avoid the 500+ MB d/l (PM if necessary) then having to burn it to a CD just for the adminpak. Thanks.

 

[SoulAssassin]

^

 

[Relayer]

Where is it located on the CD? I haven't tried it, but I do have a CD right here. I asume you are on dial-up?

<edit>I guess it's on the resource CD, not the .Net RC2 CD.</edit>

 

[spyordie007]

sorry I began installing with the first RC but since I cant admin our exchange server with them I've been avoiding it.

Do you know a way that I can admin our AD and Exch from an XP box? If so I would be more than willing to install/test on my test network as I've been looking for a good solution (I've kept 2k running on my laptop for this very reason.)

-Spy

 

[spyordie007]

/\

 

[N11]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
sorry I began installing with the first RC but since I cant admin our exchange server with them I've been avoiding it.

Do you know a way that I can admin our AD and Exch from an XP box? If so I would be more than willing to install/test on my test network as I've been looking for a good solution (I've kept 2k running on my laptop for this very reason.)

-Spy

Have you tried installing the admin toolkit from the exchange 2k CD? I'm curious myself if it will install on the XP system.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: N11

Originally posted by: spyordie007
sorry I began installing with the first RC but since I cant admin our exchange server with them I've been avoiding it.

Do you know a way that I can admin our AD and Exch from an XP box? If so I would be more than willing to install/test on my test network as I've been looking for a good solution (I've kept 2k running on my laptop for this very reason.)

-Spy

Have you tried installing the admin toolkit from the exchange 2k CD? I'm curious myself if it will install on the XP system.

No it errors out with something along the lines of "you must have windows 2000 professional or better to install..."

-Spy

 

[SoulAssassin]

I think my thread got jacked.

If you have the .NET RC2 CD just do a search for adminpak.msi, but it should be under x:\i386 (at least it was w 2K server).

 

[spyordie007]

I did a search and havent been able to find it online...

So any idea how I could manage my exchange servers from an XP box ?(and dont say terminal services)

-Spy

 

[SoulAssassin]

M$ actually has it as a seperate download freely available. I don't think they did this w RC1 or any of the other previous builds so I didn't search technet for it until now. When you don't include the tools w XP itself or make people subscribe to the CPP and d/l 550MB, it's about time they got off their @$$ and make it available seperately. You can d/l it here.

Note the need for SP1 or hotfix Q329357 before installing.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
M$ actually has it as a seperate download freely available. I don't think they did this w RC1 or any of the other previous builds so I didn't search technet for it until now. When you don't include the tools w XP itself or make people subscribe to the CPP and d/l 550MB, it's about time they got off their @$$ and make it available seperately. You can d/l it here.

Note the need for SP1 or hotfix Q329357 before installing.

as per the MS KB Article:
The Exchange SMTP and NNTP DLL files were added to Adminpak.msi. The additional Staxmem.dll, Smtpapi.dll, Smtpadm.dll, Smtpsnap.hlp, and Nntpsnap.hlp files were added to Adminpak.msi to permit 32-bit Windows XP Professional-based clients to administer the release of Exchange after Microsoft Exchange 2000.

I'll probably get to giving it a shot next week, we'll have to see just how well it works for my Exchange stuff. If it can handle creating mailstores and letting me edit the permissions and addresses correctly than this will be enough for me to use 90+% of the time.

-Spy

 

[spyordie007]

unless of course they are referring to versions of Exchange server that will be released after 2000... after I read that several times I'm starting to wonder.

-Spy

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
unless of course they are referring to versions of Exchange server that will be released after 2000... after I read that several times I'm starting to wonder.

-Spy

Enhanced functionality in Windows .NET Server 2003 administration tools may not be turned on or supported when you administer Windows 2000-based computers. For example, the new drag-and-drop feature of the Windows .NET Server Users and Computers snap-in is fully functional against Windows 2000-based domain controllers.

You may be right. I can check w an Exchange admin I know.

 

[spyordie007]

Please do, we dont have the luxury of enough staff to dedicate one to admining our exchange servers here so we're always cautious and second guessing ourselves when doing things "outside the box".

-Spy

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
Please do, we dont have the luxury of enough staff to dedicate one to admining our exchange servers here so we're always cautious and second guessing ourselves when doing things "outside the box".

-Spy

According to the Exchange website, it is not currently supported. They are working on a new version of exchange called itanium or something like that. They were going to have a service pack available but apparently people were b!tching about having it come out that way. They are going to re-write it for .net capabilities to make it more secure and more flexible anyhow, so better off just waiting.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sent: Fri 1/3/2003 1:09 PM
To: Cc:
Subject: RE: .NET RC2


You running Exchange on .NET or 2K? There?s some confusion over whether the adminpak will let you control Exchange on a 2K server.


>It appears not but if you're a gambling man the odds are the worst thing that could happen is that it won't let you control it. If this was my production environment I would probably pass and just keep a 2K/4.0 box on the KVM at my desk but we're rather an@l about down time. Then again, my friend may have no idea what he's talking about.

 

[spyordie007]

That's too bad, I'm still going to try it on my "test" network to satisfy my curiosity. And yes we're running Exchange on 2K not .net

I'm not a big fan of down-time or the PITA of fixing things that wouldnt have otherwise needed it. I have an old box that I've got 2K on, plus I kept 2K on my laptop because of this. It would be nice (however) to run XP on my laptop, if for nothing else it would be nice to have cleartype... It would be nice though to have the convinience of having the admin tools installed on my main desktop machine so I didnt have to boot-up my laptop or go to the crashbox everytime I needed to do something simple like reset a password...

-Spy

 

[SoulAssassin]

You may be able to find even more info here:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/ti/TiWinNet.doc

I didn't read the entire white paper but RPC over HTTP seems tre cool although somewhat scary w the introduction (read: force feeding) of Trustworth Computing.

 

[spyordie007]

Okay, I finally had a chance to play with it and here is my setup:
Win 2k server running AD
Win 2k server running exchange 2000
Win xp pro joined to the domain

installed the .net server RC2 adminpak
installed the exchange ti beta 2 administrative tools

from the XP pro box I have been able to successfully create users/mailstores, I've reassign a mailstore to a differant user, changed permission on a mailstore and OU from the AD users/computers mmc, and added/removed e-mail addresses for a couple of users. As far as I can tell it's working just fine, and it looks and acts nearly identical to running the exchange 2k/win 2k adminpak/tools under win 2k pro.

I think I'm going to do a few posts to the exchange groups @ microsoft to see if anyone else has done this or if they know of any issues when doing this.

-Spy