Profile Pictures in your SharePoint MySite

After migrating MySites from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 it is possible that the profile pictures no longer display correctly. The picture is either cropped showing only the top corner (for example, in the Organisation Browser) or the aspect ratio is wrong, making it look very tall and narrow (for example, under the “In Common Between Us” section).

To solve this problem simply upload your picture again - go to your profile, click “Edit My Profile” and select “Choose Picture”. You can even use the same picture which should be stored under “Shared Pictures/Profile Pictures”.

Force replication of AD partitions after tombstone lifetime exceeded / emails issues

If a server has exceed the tombstone lifetime (180 days on WS2008 by default), it will cause issues when brought back on the network.
New users, groups… are not synchronized anymore on this server, and it can cause issues with emails sent to these new users.
If the email server can check for the user in the AD against the bad server, emails won’t be delivered.

Run the following on a good dc :

Repadmin /showrepl

Get the GUI of a good DC :

DC=mydomain,DC=intra
Default-First-Site-Name\GOOD-DC1 via RPC
DSA object GUID: de7429ee-7637-45cb-bbf0-43d17b17831b
Last attempt @ 2010-07-15 12:17:30 was successful.

Then remove objects on the bad DC that not longer exist in the current AD (good DC) :

repadmin /removelingeringobjects bad-dc.mydomain.intra de7429ee-7637-45cb-bbf0-43d17b17831b "dc=mydomain, dc=intra"


Then :

repadmin /replicate bad-dc.mydomain.intra good-dc.mydomain.intra DC=mydomain,DC=intra /force

repadmin /replicate bad-dc.mydomain.intra good-dc.mydomain.intra CN=configuration,DC=mydomain,DC=intra /force

repadmin /replicate bad-dc.mydomain.intra good-dc.mydomain.intra CN=schema,CN=configuration,DC=mydomain,DC=intra /force

This will synchronize the servers for these partitions and you won’t have issues anymore with the accounts of the new users.

But, if the bad DC is planned for a removal I recommend to use the dcpromo /forceremoval method and a metadata cleanup as explained here :
Remove_ad_from_dc
Delete_failed_DC

Forefront Security for Exchange : release blocked emails

Forefont Security for Exchange (before v. 2010) may use a lot of CPU/RAM and almost hangs your transport server.

If you stop Forefront, some emails (*.eml) can remain blocked in the following folders (incoming and outgoing emails) :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security\Exchange Server\Data\Archive\in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security\Exchange Server\Data\Archive\out

In order to release them, just move them to the following folder and let Exchange process them :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security\Exchange Server\Pickup