In Server 2003 when you find an error in the Event Log you can usually just click on the link and a search will be done in the MS support database. Most of the time the errors I search for can not be found. This morning I get a error message box saying

‘Windows cannot open Help and Support because a system service is not running.
To fix this problem, start the service named ‘Help and Support’.

So I opened up services and I so not see a service named ‘Help and Support’. Great another cryptic error message.
I did some searching and found great advice from people saying, ‘go to services and start the service’ Wow, thanks I would have never thought of that from looking at the error message!

I finally found a blog entry from the Small Business Server team and there seems to be a problem with Service Pack 2. I followed the fix they have and everything is good again in the land of M$.

—————————
Help and Support Error
—————————
Windows cannot open Help and Support because a system service is not running.

To fix this problem, start the service named ‘Help and Support’.
—————————
OK
—————————

This issue is currently under investigation, however if you are currently experiencing this issue you can run the following commands to resolve the issue:

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Navigate to %windir%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries
3. Run “start /w helpsvc /svchost netsvcs /regserver /install”
4. Once this command completes the Help and Support service should now appear in services.msc
5. Start the Help and Support service

I have been having a problem with SQL server on the Small Business Server 2003 R2 running away with over 1 GB of RAM. This has lead to high memory alert messages from the server. I did some goggling and found this article at DogRiley - Your Network WatchDog.

sqlservr.exe high memory usage for SBSMonitoring process

Syntax of commands
osql -E -S servername\sbsmonitoring

sp_configure ’show advanced options’,1
reconfigure with override
go
sp_configure ‘max server memory’, nnnn
reconfigure with override
go

I followed his example with my server named gentoo

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>osql -E -S gentoo\sbsmonitoring
1> sp_configure ’show advanced options’,1
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system
administrator.
Configuration option ’show advanced options’ changed from 0 to 1. Run the
RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> sp_configure ‘max server memory’,100
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system
administrator.
Configuration option ‘max server memory (MB)’ changed from 2147483647 to 100.
Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> quit

What a way to spend 2 days of my easter weekend. I added some RAM and added a drive to the RAID array of the main server.

I needed to dived the extra space over 3 partitions currently on the server, so I needed a partitioning tool, and I did not want to pay for it. I have used Knoppix in the past and loaded up QTParted, and it has worked well. I went to use this tool again, but found I could not move partitions. So I did some searching and found GParted, and they had a Live CD.

So I made sure I had a complete backup and booted up the CD.

Very basic interface, but it was all that was needed, nothing more. The program scanned my drivers and found everything. I then proceeded to resize, and move partitions. The tool did everything I needed! I then Hit apply, and a warning came up saying it might take a long time, and I assumed maybe a few hours.

11 hours later the first partition was done, now came the other 2. just under 20 hours from starting, the process was finished. The only complaint that I have is that there was no message box on the screen reporting that the operations were complete.

Go to Start | All Programs | Accessories, then right-click on “Command Prompt”, and select “Run as administrator”.
This will open a command prompt window with admin rights.
Navigate to the directory where you saved the apache*.msi install file, and type “msiexec /i apache*.msi”
(where apache*.msi is the actual name of the file - hint: type apache and then hit tab, it should fill in the file name automatically). Hit enter, and the rest should work just fine, it did for me. Hope this helps.

IntelliAdmin.com: Starting and stopping services across an entire domain
Starting and stopping services across an entire domain

Stopping and starting services within windows is quite easy. From the command line you can simply type:

net stop to stop a service

or

net start to start a service

Or even easier, open the service manager by clicking on start, run and then type ’services.msc’ and click OK