The services could not connect to the database.

Possible reasons for the message:

The database server may not be allowing remote connections, make sure the database server is setup correctly and that the firewall in not blocking the connections.

The KB here did not help me : https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX233581

Solution:

Set the service : SQL Server Browser to Automatic and Start

Make sure TCP/IP is enabled and a TCP port is set ( If this is not the database service will need to be restarted ) 

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This is because you cannot make changes in Live

If you look top right you can see the current status

Click File and Select Mode

Choose Offline Mode

Make the changes you need then click and save

Change back to Online Mode

Push Save and Make live

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Recently a user’s office documents were not defaulting to print A4 even though the defaults for the printer were set to A4.

Printing from other programs such as adobe reader and notepad printed fine

In the end opening word and going to Layout , then Page setup and setting the below to “Set as Default” resolved the issue

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Recently had an issue where Group Policies were not applying to a machine.

Gpresult /r showed the group policy 

On checking the machine, the Up Time was over 30 days. The user said she had shutdown the computer. Turns out Windows 10 has a default option called “fast startup” which Sleeps the computer on shutdown!

To disable this Disable the GPO

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Shutdown\Require use of fast startup does set the following registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\HiberbootEnabled=0 (REG_DWORD)

Set the Registry key

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Powerfix\HiberbootEnabled=0

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In monitoring we recently saw a Scheduled Task for a Shadow Copy Job failing with 0x2.

After running the Action manually in CMD I go the below error

C:\Windows\system32>C:\Windows\system32\vssadmin.exe Create Shadow /AutoRetry=15 /For=\\?\Volume{411116ac-84e511-11116-80d4-11111111111}\

vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

Error: Either the specified volume was not found or it is not a local volume.

Running this in powershell listed all the Volumes with their current GID

GWMI -namespace root\cimv2 -class win32_volume | FL -property Label,DriveLetter,DeviceID,SystemVolume,Capacity,Freespace

Turns out the job was for a GUID that didn’t exist anymore on that system. After checking the other ShadowCopyVolume Tasks to make sure all the Disks were accounted for , I deleted the errored job

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Recently a user needed to Search another user’s 100GB Archive and Mailbox. Outlook search was taking far too long.

You can assign a user Permission to use the Content Search in  Security and Compliance Center  and limit access to a single Mailbox.

Assign Roles : 

In the Security and Compliance Center, Under Permissions,  Create a new Role with the following Roles assigned and add the User who needs to access

Assign Filter

This limits the users search scope to only a single Mailbox

Connect to 365 Security and Compliance Center :

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.compliance.protection.outlook.com/powershell-liveid -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection Import-PSSession $Session -AllowClobber -DisableNameChecking

Add Filter

New-ComplianceSecurityFilter -FilterName MailboxFilter -Users pa@domain.com -Filters “Mailbox_DisplayName -like ‘John Smith'” -Action All

Wait around 10 minutes for this to apply then try logging in

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Recently when trying to login to a Citrix XenApp Server ( OS Server 2012 R2 ) users were getting a frozen Welcome Screen. The loading ‘Circle” would just stop and go no further.

Rebooting the cluster ( Datacollectors/Storefront and XenApp Servers ) did not resolve the issue. The session would start to load then go no further. I could login to the server via the console just not through the receiver.

Logging into the Data Collector I was greeted with 

“Trial Period Expired”

Checking the Licensing Tab showed no available licenses. I wasn’t able to check the original licenses so I created a temp account to setup a Trial License of 90 days

Create Trial Citrix Licenses

1. Navigate to www.citrix.com and select Sign In (located in the upper right hand corner).
2. Sign in using your My Account login credentials 
3. Hover over the Downloads Tab and select Free Trials 
4. Select the product you are trying to evaluate 
5. Proceed to follow the prompts to request the product of choice 

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Upon trying to access Legacy Public Folders using 365 Webmail ( OWA ) the following error message is displayed

No public folders are available. Check that a public folders deployment exists in this Exchange Organisation
If so , please try again later

Solution:

You will need to use Outlook as per below

“In addition, users whose mailboxes are in Exchange Online won’t be able to access on-premises public folders using Outlook Web App”

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/dn986544(v=exchg.150).aspx

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Had a ticket regarding 3 different sent emails to 3 different third parties which were getting duplicated into an IT mailbox on Office 365.

I double checked the “rules” under Mail flow to make sure there were no BCC rules for the users sending which there were not.

In MailTrace the emails came up as Status “Expanded”. This means the email has been sent to a group, however the original email was sent to a Single External Email address?

Why was the external email being displayed as a group in 365?

Turns Out the Outbound Spam Preferences had been turned on! And for whatever reason, these items were triggering the BCC of suspicious messages! 

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If you navigate to your Calendar Tab in Outlook App

Click on this icon 

Then Add Shared Calendars

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