The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.

Your Windows Server 2003, Small Business Server Backup fails with the error: “The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.”

When you investigate the log you see that the tape mounted fine and a good portion of the backup completed successfully but then you see the above message and right after that “The operation was ended” and further down  “The operation did not successfully complete.”

The error message is not very telling – the most likely cause of your trouble is that there is not enough space on the tape anymore and that is why the backup is failing. You can take one or more of the following actions:

1. Clean up – remove from the disk all the files and folders that are not needed anymore;
2. Go to the backup configuration and exclude folders that might not need to be backed up;
3. Get higher capacity tapes

Cannot uninstall - msi is on a network resource that is not available

Symptom: You try to remove a program from your machine but the operation fails and you see a message along the lines of “the so and so msi is on a network resource that is not available”. Even if you try to locate the original msi and tell windows where it is it may still fail. This often happens when you are trying to install a new version of a software and the new version attempts to remove the old one but fails.

Cause:  the installation of that software has become corrupt. You may have manually deleted the files from your machine instead of properly uninstalling the application or something else happened on the machine but one way or another Windows cannot find the files it needs where it expects to find them in order to successfully remove the application.

Resolution:  Microsoft has provided a fix for this problem here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2438651/ - this utility will clean up the registry entries belonging to that application so that you can install the new version of the application in question if you need to.

Email trouble error is 0x80004005-0x0004b9-0x000501

Symptom: you try to send an email using Outlook to someone and you get the following bounce back message:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

This message could not be sent. Try sending the message again later, or contact your network administrator. The client operation failed. Error is [0x80004005-0x0004b9-0x000501].

Possible causes and solutions:

1. This error can be caused by intermittent network problems in which case simply resending the message should work.
2. Outdated DNS entries on the cache in which case flushing the DNS cache should do the trick. To clear up the cache start the command line utility and type ipconfig /flushdns and hit enter. That should clear the cache so when you resend the email the recipient's address will be resolved again and it should work fine.  
3. Local address book entries are out of sync with the corresponding server entries. In this case removing the particular address from your local address book should resolve the issue. In Outlook 2010 to remove the entry from your local address book do the following: start typing the address in question on the address bar of a new email, a drop down appears with all matching names; move the mouse over the address of interest and you will see a red "x" appear on the side of that name - click on it to remove that entry.

If you tried all the above and are still receiving he same error put a comment here and we will try to help you identify the problem.

Outlook closes when I minimize the window

Customer says: "Every time I minimize my Outlook, it closes (or maybe just disappears).  Any ideas on this?  It just started doing it spontaneously a couple of days ago.  I haven’t changed any settings."

Resolution: Outlook is not really closing, just "disappearing". In fact, it does not really disappear but instead of showing up on the task bar where you would normally see it, shows only as a little icon on the sys tray. To fix change this behaviour right-click on the outlook icon on the sys tray and uncheck the option “Hide When Minimized”.

Outlook 2010 can't open or save tif attachments

All of a sudden a user starts having trouble opening or saving faxes that have arrived to her inbox as tif attachments from the fax server. Here is the behavior you see:

1. You try to preview or open the attachment – you receive an error like “Cannot create fax.tif. Check the permissions on the folder you are trying to save the file to”.
2. You drag the attachment and try to drop it on a folder – you hear a beep and nothing happens. Same if you right click and copy the try to paste it on a folder. 
3. You right click on the attachment and try to “Save as” you see the same error as in number 1 above.

You check the permissions and yes you do have full control on the folder you are trying to save the attachment to. So what is the problem?

 

Here is what happens: anytime you preview, open or copy an attachment that is considered safe Outlook saves a copy of the attachment in a folder under the Temporary Internet Files folder. Now, if you close outlook while the attachment is open then the file will remain on that temporary folder forever as it is left in an “open” status and Outlook cannot dispose of it. When the number of those “open” files in the temporary outlook secure folder grows beyond a certain limit then you start seeing the behavior described above.

 

Resolution: locate the folder where Outlook stores those files and delete them. In Windows 7 with Outlook 2010 the folder you are looking for has a randomly generate name and is located under C:\Users\ username \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook

 

Note: while this issue was experienced with the tif attachments it can happen with any type of attachments and the resolution is the same.