Error 1068 failed to start when trying to start services

Issue:
Trying to stand up a new IIS server and could not get the app pools to spin up.  I went to services and activated World Wide Web Publishing Service.  Then I went to start the service and it issued error 1068!

Solution:

Take a look at the properties for the service.  Click on the dependencies tab.  This will list all of the underlying services you need.  Turns out that the Windows Process Activation Service was disabled.  I enabled and then I was able to start the WWW Publishing service.

AD FS Sign in customization

Problem:

Have a CRM application which uses client certs to grant access via AD FS 2.0.  This work great
and sends our customer's through no issue.  We had an edge case which exposed some issues.  If the user was not in the CRM issue then ADFS should failover to the error page.  This however, was not the case and the user simply was staring at a blank html page on the ADFS server.

Solution:

I wracked my brain on this and read some great info on ADFS IIS settings at microsoft.  Lots of information on this configuration but not a lot of help for my particular problem.  Then I ran across a reference to the AD FS Admin Log.  This is a separate log file from System logs.  These System logs did not show anything helpful.  The AD FS Admin logs were very clear we were having issues with the FIPS compliance.  I blogged this several years ago (http://fetchmytip.blogspot.com/2013/06/an-unexpected-error-has-occurred-moss.html).  Once I kicked the registry and set the FIPS bit to 0, ADFS kicked over and started working.

Source:

1. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh202806%28v=vs.110%29.aspx
2. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh599321.aspx
3. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3044976
4. http://fetchmytip.blogspot.com/2013/06/an-unexpected-error-has-occurred-moss.html

• You are continually prompted for credentials.
• Event 111 is logged in the AD FS Admin log, as follows:
  
  

  Log Name:  AD FS 2.0/Admin
  Event ID: 111
  Level: Error  
  Keywords: AD FS  
  Description:
  The Federation Service encountered an error while processing the WS-Trust request. 
  Request type: http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust/RST/Issue 
  Exception details: 
  Microsoft.IdentityModel.SecurityTokenService.FailedAuthenticationException: MSIS3019: 

Take IIS offline for Mainx

If you need to take an IIS server down then all you need to do is park an html page.,
app_offline.htm at the IIS root.  This will block all requests coming to that server.

The app_offline.htm File

So now that we've decided we want to take an application offline, how do we do it? If we've got access to the server we could stop the web site via the IIS management console, but in most shared hosting scenarios you don't have that kind of access to the server. The other shortcoming of that approach is that many developers publish via FrontPage Server Extensions or WebDAV, both of which need the web site to be running in order to make changes.
Enter the app_offline.htm file. The app_offline.htm file is a special file that ASP.NET 2.0 watches for in the root of an application. If the file exists, then ASP.NET shuts down the application and sends the contents of the file back to the user's browser for any new requests to dynamic pages in the application. This means that users are basically locked out of the application and you're free to make any changes that need to be made before removing the file and letting them back in.

Source

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/300416/iis-redirect-all-requests-to-one-page

Permanently redirect web traffic on IIS.

Problem

Handed a task to redirect user's from an old site to the new site.  Getting reports of site outage due to fact user's are trying to access server we have decommissioned.  They need to be using new server url but are using old bookmarks.  IIS has a couple of ways to do it but easiest is to use built in support.

User Interface

To use the UI

1. Open IIS Manager and navigate to the level you want to manage. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7). For information about navigating to locations in the UI based on your IIS administrative role, see Navigation in IIS Manager (IIS 7).
   
2. In Features View, double-click HTTP Redirect.
   
   
   
   
   
3. On the HTTP Redirect page, under Redirect Behavior, select one of the following values from the Status code list:
   
   
    
   
   
   • Found (302) - to tell the Web client to issue a new request to the location specified in the Location HTTP header.
     
   • Permanent (301) - to tell the Web client that the location for the requested resource has permanently changed.
     
   • Temporary (307) - to tell the Web client to resend the POST data, which prevents a Web browser from losing data when the browser issues an HTTP POST request.
     
4.  Click OK.
   

Source

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770393%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Sharing a vhd with your friends!

Problem:

Today, I was attempting to set up another dev with a vhd which contained our dev enviroment.  I could not get him to boot into the vhd.  I had it working on my box but could not get him up and running.  I was stumped.  I found a technet article by Chris Avis.  Chris does a great job explaining the whole process.  It was good review material but not really anything new until I hit the part about reusing your vhd with other users.  The key was running sysprep.  This takes out machine/profile specific information from the the vhd.  It gives the new user the OOBE (Out of the Box Experience) when they start the vhd the first time.  It also allows the vhd to make specific changes required for the box where it is now running.

Solution:

Now that we have a completely built Windows OS with everything we want installed, we are going to sun SYSPREP to create a distributable package that can be used for Boot to VHD.

1 ) On the virtual machine, run SYSPREP with administrative privileges

Windows 8.1/10/2012 R2 – Click Start, type CMD, right click CMD, select Run as Administrator
Windows 12/2012R2 – From the Start screen, type CMD, right click Command Prompt, select Run as Administrator (bottom of screen)

This will open a CMD prompt window and drop you at the c:\windows\system32 directory

2) Change to the \sysprep directory and run SYSPREP.EXE

3) Select the following options for SYSPREP

System Cleanup Action:  Enter Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)
Check the “Generalize” box
Shutdown Options:  Shutdown

When you click OK, SYSPREP will remove the current user profile, set Windows to run the Out-of-Box experience on startup (will ask for very basic information on startup), and best of all…..Stop the clock on the trial version!! How long SYSPREP takes is dependent on the speed of the host you are working on, and what applications you installed to Windows. Usually it takes no more than 5-10 minutes for SYSPREP to complete and shutdown the virtual machine.

Source:

1. ) http://blogs.technet.com/b/chrisavis/archive/2013/05/03/boot-to-vhd-configuring-creating-a-reusable-trial-version-image-and-more.aspx
2.)http://fetchmytip.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-enable-virtualization-on-hp.html