Resetting passwords in Avast! ADNM Console

Passwords get lost.
It is a simple reality of the security conscious technology driven world we live in.  That and password complexity rules which make differential calculus look simple.

So, imagine our surprise when we lost forgot an administrator password to one of our Avast! Antivirus ADNM console installs.

Fortunately for us, there is a quick and painless solution.

Prerequisites
You must have read/write access to the avast database created when you setup your Avast! corporate editions.

How to change a password in Avast!

    1. Make sure the prerequisites are met
    2. Logon to the avast SQL database
    3. Execute the following query

SELECT *
FROM dbo.[User]

    1. Note the ObjectId for the user you wish to reset the password on
    2. Execute the following update query

UPDATE dbo.[User]
SET Password = ‘[Reset Password Goes Here]’
WHERE ObjectId = [ObjectId of User Goes Here]

  1. To re-encrypt the password, set the password via the ADNM console.

Much easier than reinstalling!

SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 (You aren’t done yet)

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The engineers here at AIS have a love hate relationship with patch management. When it works, life is wonderful… when it does not work… well…

Which leads us to SharePoint 2010’s Service Pack 1 (available to download at this link). When downloaded and executed against your server, this service pack updates the binaries NOT the database. How will you know? You will notice several errors in your event log similar to this one:

The mount operation for the gatherer application [Guid goes here] has failed because the schema version of the search administration database is less then the minimum backwards compatibility schema version support for this gatherer application. The database might not have been upgraded.

So, what is happening here?
The service pack has updated the SharePoint 2010 binaries (I.E. the software is up-to-date). The service pack, however, does not run the Configuration Wizard. This means the SQL database has not yet had the necessary scripts executed to update the database schema. It seems the update is really a two step process.

So, how do I really know I need to perform additional steps
Ask SharePoint Smile

  1. Launch the SharePoint Management Shell
    Start Menu: All Programs –> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products –> SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
  2. Enter the following command
    (get-spserver $env:computername).NeedsUpgrade
  3. If the response is True, you server requires additional upgrade steps to be completed

So, how do I fix it?

  1. Launch the SharePoint Management Shell
    Start Menu: All Programs –> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products –> SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
    Important! Remember to run the management shell as an administrator
  2. Enter the following command
    psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait
    NOTE: This command *must* be entered on every server in your SharePoint farm

It is recommended to run IISRESET or (our personal favorite) reboot the server.

Creating SharePoint 2010 Themes: The Quick and Painless Guide

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SharePoint 2010 Standard and Enterprise editions support changing themes directly from the SharePoint administration pages.  These theme pages are a very powerful tool which supports updating any theme color as well as previewing your changes directly from the browser.

SharePoint 2010 Foundation edition users, however, do not have the ability to change themes directly from the browser.  While the lack of a theme editor in the Foundation edition is painful, all is not lost.  If you have PowerPoint 2010, you still have the ability to customize your portal’s themes.
NOTE: The techniques discussed in this blog entry are targeted for SharePoint 2010 Foundation users, but will work equally as well with Standard and Enterprise editions.

Prerequisites

  1. SharePoint 2010 (any edition)
  2. PowerPoint 2010
  3. You must be a site administrator within SharePoint 2010
  4. 10 minutes of your time

We suggest starting with an existing SharePoint 2010 theme rather than using one of the provided PowerPoint themes.

Step#1: Download an existing SharePoint 2010 theme for editing
NOTE: If you are creating a new theme from scratch or wish to use the PowerPoint built-in themes, please skip to Step#2: Edit the theme.

All of these steps take place within SharePoint

  1. Navigate: Site Actions –> Site Settings
    This will open the Site Settings page
  2. Locate the Site Collections Administration section within the Site Settings page.
    If you see the option “Go to top level site settings”, click it now!
  3. Now locate the Galleries section within the Site Settings page
  4. Click the Themes link to open the Theme Gallery (See image below)
    image
  5. Locate the theme you wish to use as your base theme.  Click the checkbox (I.E. check the box) located to the left of the theme you have selected.  This will open the SharePoint ribbon
  6. Click the Edit Document button within the SharePoint ribbon
  7. PowerPoint 2010 will open with the SharePoint 2010 theme loaded
    NOTE: PowerPoint can take several seconds to open

Step#2: Edit the theme

All of these steps take place within PowerPoint

  1. Click Design on the PowerPoint ribbon menu
  2. Locate and click Colors within the design ribbon
    The colors drop-down is located to the far right on the ribbon (see image below)
    image
  3. Select Create New Theme Colors (see image above)
  4. Using the Create New Theme Colors dialog, change the color palette to meet your style and branding needs
  5. Change the name to reflect the updated custom color palette
  6. Click Save on the Create New Theme Colors dialog to save the updated color palette
  7. Click File on the PowerPoint ribbon menu
  8. Select Save As
  9. Change the Save as type to “Office Theme” and save your updated theme (see image below).
    image

Step#3: Upload the theme to SharePoint

All of these steps take place within SharePoint

  1. Open the Theme Gallery. 
    (See steps 1 – 4 in Step#1: Download an existing…)
  2. Click Add new item located at the bottom of the list
  3. Browse to the theme file you created and saved from PowerPoint
  4. Complete the upload of the theme into SharePoint

 

Additional Tips
You can also update existing themes be saving your newly updated themes as the same name as an existing theme.  This will overwrite the existing theme’s colors with your new color palette.