Steve's Lotus Land

I've been noticing some unpleasant things with my Domino Server after upgrading to the latest version of Black Berry Enterprise Server.

Issue:  After the latest version was installed the Domino server would hang after a reboot.  It would get stuck at Applying Computer Settings.

Troubleshooting: I noticed that there were three Blackberry services stuck on "starting".  I was able to eventually get logged in via safe mode and set these three services to "Manual".  After a reboot the server did not hang anymore, it logged right in.

Resolution: There are some dependencies that need to be set on the three services that hang.  I did fin a Blackberry knowledge base article on how to do this.  The services are;

BlackBerry Dispatcher

BlackBerry Policy Service

BlackBerry Synchronization Service 

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/dynamickc.do?externalId=KB03806&sliceId=SAL_Public&command=show&forward=nonthreadedKC&kcId=KB03806

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/dynamickc.do?externalId=KB03806&sliceId=SAL_Public&command=show&forward=nonthreadedKC&kcId=KB03806

Additional Notes:  

If the above does not solve the issue then check to see if patch MS06-071 is installed on the server.  This patch can also cause these symptoms.  BlackBerry recomends the following.  Also be sure if you are using 4.16 to install the Maintenance Release 2, the MR2 fixes a lot of problems.

Resolution: From BlackBerrys KB, DOC ID KB11013, created on 12-2-2008

1. Uninstall all versions of MSXML, including patches

2. Delete msxml4.dll from C:\WINDOWS\System32

3. Reboot (I set all of the services to manual including Lotus, so the server wouldn't hang)

4. Install MSXML 4.0 SP2 - located in the Tools folder of the extracted install files for BES

5. Reboot

After the final reboot I set all of the services back to Automatic, including domino and then did another reboot.

If anyone out there is new to Notes 8 and the RSS feature, this might be a helpful tip.  This is of course documented in the Lotus Notes Online help, but who reads those .  If your Notes server does not allow anonymous connections, you'll need to take advantage of the "Accounts" section in the personal address book.  You can set a user name and password to connect to a secured Notes databases.  This will allow the built in RSS feed reader to connect to your Notes database and grab the RSS content.  On the "Accounts" screen it typically needs the http or https address of where the notes database is located (https://notes.yourcompany.com/DBNAme/ViewthathasRSS), the password should be your internet password.  I think that there is a server policy for this too, incase you need to roll out an account to a large number of users.

I came accross an odd issue the other day with one of our users.  If you open the built-in Sametime client in a new window (undock from the side bar), use the screen capture tool, the File and Edit menu disapears.  Once Sametime is re-docked, use the capture tool again, hmmm the File and Edit menu are there now.  What's up with that?

After rolling out Lotus Notes 8.0.1 to all of our clients we began to get some phone calls from our users about Lotus Notes crashing several times a day.  After many hours of research and trouble shooting, I found that McAfee Antivirus (enterprise version 8.5) installs a scan component as a menu item for Lotus Notes.  I also found an article on McAfee's web site stating that Lotus Notes 8 would not be supported until their next release 8.7.  If you are using McAfee and have rolled out Lotus 8 be sure to uninstall the McAfee components.  I used Add/Remove and selected Change, deselected the Lotus Notes Scanner option, next through the wizzard.  After the uninstall finished, I removed the six McAfee files from the C:\Program Files\lotus\notes directory.  After completing this process, Lotus Notes 8 ran without an issue on every machine.

NCDAEMON.EXE

NCEXTMGR.DLL

NCMENU.DLL

NCSCAN.DLL

NCTRACE.DLL

NCINSTALL.DLL

Locate the Notes.INI in the same directory as above (C:\Program Files\lotus\notes)

Locate the Notes.INI in the same directory as above (C:\Program Files\lotus\notes)

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** BE VERY CAREFUL ** ONLY REMOVE THE LINES BELOW **

*******************************************************************

Double click the Notes.ini, click on edit, click find, type in AddIn.

this will jump you down to the area where these two lines are located

they are usually together

AddInMenus=NCMenu

EXTMGR_ADDINS=NCExtMgr