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SBS 2008 - Exchange 2007 - Unable to Install PureMessage 3.1.3

Hi all

I'm new to the forum so please bear with me.

Basically before i joined the company we had version 3 of Sophos PureMessage installed, along with the Enterprise Console and the AV solution. However this expired some time ago and we have been using an alternative AV, PureMessage has continued to do a good job though of catching a good majority of the spam before getting to Exchange.

I have managed to get the green light to update to the latest version of PureMessage for Exchange 2007 which currently is 3.1.3, however when i goto do this it refuses to update, citing an issue with: Logon Failure: unknown user name or bad password even though i am logged on as a domain administrator. When we do eventually get this error though it mentions in the error message box that it can't contact the AD/LDAP server. I've spent hours on this trying to resolve it, but without much luck. I'm even in contact with the 2nd/3rd line support teams who don't seem to know what to do either.

Basically we had an old version of Sophos PureMessage (v3.0) on our SBS 2008 server running Exchange 2007, and we wanted to upgrade this to 3.1.1. That in itself is fine, however during the installation no matter what we seemed to do it wouldn't upgrade to the new version. We have now uninstalled PureMessage in order to install it again from scratch.

However the same problem now happens on a new installation. During the setup process it asks to create a new password for the predefined user of 'SophosPureMessage' but according to the error message the password complexity requirements don't meet what the domain wants - even though i have entered passwords as long as 15-20 characters and include alphanumeric, uppercase, lowercase, multiple special characters. What we have tried is creating a network user of SophosPureMessage manually instead which then lets us past this stage, however the setup will fail during the last stages of the setup as it says it is unable to contact the AD domain because of logon failure. However we know that the AD domain is contactable as all other domain services work fine (DNS, Email, Logon etc).

Our server is configured to run using a domain format of XXX.local, however the error message doesn't include the '.local' in the error message of the installer. It just says unable to contact XXX.

I have been working with the 3rd line teams for Sophos support who have been very good, but we aren't getting anywhere after more then a week. What they did suggest is running a VBS script which had the following, because of the problem. For now i am just putting XXX to substitute our own domain name.
======================
const ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = &H0001

Set oDSP = GetObject("LDAP:")
Set obj = oDSP.OpenDSObject("LDAP://XXX/rootDSE",vbNullString,vbNullString,ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION)
WScript.Echo obj.Get("configurationNamingContext")
======================

Using command prompt, we then run the following command (with elevated privileges) on the root of C: cscript test.vbs > test.txt

We are getting an error that came back with: c:\Test.vbs(4, 1) (null): Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.

I have done an NSLOOKUP command for our domain are the following is returned:

c:\>nslookup XXX
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  fe80::5be1:f55d:a87f:965a

Name:    XXX.XXX.local
Address:  10.0.0.32

Does anyone know why, or more importantly how to fix this error at all?? Some forums have suggested turning on IPV6 but this is already switched on so i don't believe this is the issue.

 Other things that i can confirm:
- Being an SBS server this is the only domain controller on the domain
- We are logging on as a domain administrator
- The server doesn't run DHCP



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  • Can you browse your domain using the netbios name?

    \\domainnetbiosname

    if not, create a hosts entry on the server and point its IP address to the domain netbios name.

    xx.xx.xx.xx domainnetbiosname

    Run the setup again

    Hope it helps!
  • Hi Ziggyedman

    I have tried what you have suggested and i am able to get to our SBS server main shares ok, but this still doesn't work during the install process. Any further ideas?
  • Hey Ben and Hugh!

    Are you trying to install PME 3.1.1?

    The latest PME version to use with Exchange 2007/2010 is 3.1.3.

    Download and install 3.1.3

    Do the following steps before the installation attempt:

    Download PureMessage Support Tools:PureMessage 3.1 & 4.x: downloads.sophos.com/.../pmex_31_support_tools.zip
    Create the folder: c:\PMDEBUGLOGS
    Open the downloaded support tools folder -> ICDebugregistryKeysdouble click on pmdebuglogs.reg - this will load some keys into windows registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SOPHOS\PMDebugLogs
    Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SOPHOS\PMDebugLogs, right click PMDebuglogs and create a new REG_DWORD named "EnableLogging". Set it value to 1
    Re-run the puremessage setup and when it fails, check the logs inside c:\PMdebuglogs. The recent files must show the error (maybe this one PMInstallUtil-xxxx log)...open the files and search for ERR

    post the errors.

    There's a more complex procedure we can try for the "Failed to Create User account. Ensure the password satisfies complexity requirements" but it would be interesting to see what's being logged.

    Thanks guys! Hope this helps

  • Hi Ziggy

    Thanks for the tip.  Almost worked. I have now resolved the issue twice with a host file record. See my post below.