Microsoft Knowledge Base

By Scott Schnoll
19 Apr 2004 | SearchExchange.com

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The following are Exchange resources from "25 Exchange 2003 Tips in 25 minutes." This content is excerpted from Scott Schnoll's book, "Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Distilled," brought to you by © (2004) Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Addison-Wesley Professional. Return to the main page for more tips on this topic.

The Exchange Support Center is one of many product support centers linked to Microsoft Help and Support Online. This is Microsoft's primary online product support site for customers in the United States. Non-U.S. customers typically use one of the international support Web sites listed at http://support.microsoft.com/com mon/international.aspx. Regardless of which locale you choose, all Microsoft Help and Support sites include a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

The Microsoft Knowledge Base Online is a Web front-end to Microsoft's database of Knowledge Base articles (sometimes referred to as KBs) that contain information that Microsoft wants the general public to know about its products and technologies. KBs range in content from specific how-to articles to errata to clarifications of Microsoft policies and so forth.

The Microsoft Knowledge Base often supplements the knowledge about Exchange that has not yet made its way into other Exchange product documentation. This is one of the reasons that the Microsoft Knowledge Base is one of the first places I check when troubleshooting an issue with a Microsoft product. It is updated frequently and very easy to access. You can search the Microsoft Knowledge Base Online at http://support.microsoft. com/search, and if you use Internet Explorer to access the Web, you can go directly to any article if you know the article number. For example, if you want to view article 818474, you would enter "MSKB 818474" into the Internet Explorer address bar, which would then open that article from the Web. To make this work, you need to add the following registry entries to the computer you use to browse the Web. First create this new KEY:

Location: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchURL\mskb

Then add the following values under this key (all are REG_SZ):

Value: Default Value Data: http://support.microsoft.com /default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;%s

Value: (space) ~ note this is not the word space but a single space Value Data: +

Value: + Value Data: %2B

Value: % Value Data: %25

Value: & Value Data: %26

Offline access to the Microsoft Knowledge Base is available via a monthly CD subscription called Microsoft TechNet. This is handy to have when online access is not available (which might even be the problem you need to fix). You can find pricing and information on Microsoft TechNet subscriptions at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/subscr iptions.

Get more "25 Exchange 2003 Tips in 25 minutes." Return to the main page.

About the author: Scott Schnoll, an Expert on SearchExchange.com, is an MCT, MCSA and a long-time Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

In addition to writing "Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Distilled," he is a co-author of the upcoming "Exchange 2003 Resource Kit from Microsoft Press" and lead author for "Exchange 2000 Server: The Complete Reference."

Scott has written numerous articles for Exchange & Outlook Magazine, and is a regular speaker at Microsoft conferences, including MEC and TechEd, as well as industry conferences such as Comdex and MCP TechMentor, where he covers topics such as Exchange, clustering, Internet Information Services and security.

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