Office 365 "Belongs to:" incorrect / activation

When re provisioning laptops and desktops that utilize Office 365 installations the subscription login doesn't update properly. Although this can be fixed as sugested by many by logging into the old users OWA account, Install Status, and deactivate this doesn't help any when the user account no longer exists.
The user can wait the 31 days until it begins to complain that it's unlicensed, but that's not good product administration in my opinion. I don't want my users to have to worry about it, period.

Logging out on the account page and logging back in also does not update the "belongs to" field.

Options:

• Reinstall Office - wow, what a waste of time for something that should be easy
• Do an online repair - Again, this works, but it takes awhile depending on your connection.
• Run a quick script - YAY (but again, what the heck is MS thinking, this should be easy!)

Thanks to our good friends over at Spiceworks and in particular Marcragusa for this post.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1790625-how-to-change-office-365-desktop-install-licensee

additionally, there is a lot out there covering this once you know its an issue.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/odsupport/2015/05/01/how-to-reset-an-office-365-install-to-the-initial-activationinstall-state/

Open up a cmd prompt as administrator

• cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus
• then run
• cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /unpkey:XXXXX

I have to do this fairly often so I slapped together a weak powershell file with this. Since I'm not overly skilled with PS I have to retype the last 5 of the key back in, but at least I don't have to remember the commands. Maybe someone can take the output of the first one and pull out the last 5 for the second command automagically.

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus}

$prodkey = Read-Host "Enter the last 5 characters of the product key"

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /unpkey:$prodkey} -ArgumentList $prodkey

Office 365 Outlook prompts for password

We have a deployment of Office 365 with ADConnect SSO enabled. Additionally, with the implementation of modern authentication (MA) we have set the flag to true. https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/enable-or-disable-modern-authentication-in-exchange-online-58018196-f918-49cd-8238-56f57f38d662

We also enabled MA for Skype online even though we do not use it fully currently.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/34339.skype-for-business-online-enable-your-tenant-for-modern-authentication.aspx

More info on Modern Authentication:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/using-office-365-modern-authentication-with-office-clients-776c0036-66fd-41cb-8928-5495c0f9168a

We started seeing issues where Outlook would prompt for password, especially after password change. After much searching we found the following reg key that is recommended by MS when MA is utilized in order to force outlook to use MA.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3126599/outlook-prompts-for-password-when-modern-authentication-is-enabled

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4041439/modern-authentication-configuration-requirements-for-transition-from-o

We deployed the keys with GPO Preferences.

Outlook:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\AlwaysUseMSOAuthForAutoDiscover

Dword: 1

Skype for Business:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync\ AllowAdalForNonLyncIndependentOfLync

Dword: 1


Update: 
We've had a few users where this issue started again. 
Settings - Accounts - Access Work or School - select user - disconnect.  Fixes every time, instantly so far.

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update 1709 fails to apply (update 1803 I experienced same issue)

I recently had a number of Dell Latitude e7450 laptops that would rollback the installation of 1709. I also had several of the exact same model laptop that installed successfully.
In most cases I would be left with no indication of why it failed. I attempted installation from WSUS, Windows Update Assistant, and Windows Media Creation to USB.

I updated drivers, bios, all applications, removed AV (note had most succeed with AV), repair windows update, rename the softwaredistribution folder, etc, all to no effect.

Only when using the Windows Media Creation tool and then running the update from USB did it give me any workable indication of what was going wrong. (double click setup from the USB drive)

"We couldn't install Windows 10.  We've set your PC back to the way it was right before you started installing.  0x8007042B - 0x3000D  The installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during MIGRATE_DATA operation"

That helps! MS even gives a "click here" for troubleshooting codes that pertain. Unfortunately, none of them are this code.  Google foo gave some info and short time later I was looking at the C:\Windows\Panther\  folder.  In particular the C:\Windows\Panther\NewOs\Panther\setuperr.log.

Almost at the very bottom I found a line stating:
Error WRITE, 0x000000B7 while gathering/applying object: File, C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent [2017_09_1_3177.pdf.lnk]. Will return 0[gle=0x00000002]
Error 183 while applying object C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent [2017_09_1_3177.pdf.lnk]. Shell application requested abort[gle=0x00000002]
Abandoning apply due to error for object: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent [2017_09_1_3177.pdf.lnk][gle=0x00000002]
Apply failed. Last error: 0x00000000

The recent folder under AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows ended up being the issue for every computer that I had issues updating to 1709 or 1803!


Cleanup profile:
I went to the path in question and dumped the entire recent folder.  Started upgrade again and success!
What a pain, why can't the error descriptions be descriptive and helpful.

Office 365 - Add Shared Mailbox's Calendar to mobile device

With all the recent changes to Office 365 I found that it's become confusing as to how to easily add a Shared Mailbox OR Room Calendar to a users mobile device.  This works for both Native iOS calendar app or the Outlook for iOS / Android app.

This post goes over the new features
Calendar Sharing in Office 365

Additionally, this post goes over sharing your calendar!
Share your calendar in Outlook on the web for business

And finally, this has instructions for opening a shared mailbox in a seperate window so that you can access the necessary share button which is critical step.
Open and use a shared mailbox in Outlook Web App

Natively, when you create a new Shared or Room mailbox and assign delegates from the O365 Admin portal the new mailboxes / calendars will automatically show up in your Outlook for PC application after a short period.  They do not however automatically show up on your mobile device.  Instead, you must access the Shared / Room mailbox directly and add each user as a delegate which in turn emails an invitation to the users.  The user must then accept the invite from the mobile device which will add it to all of their mobile devices.

1. First, we've created the Shared mailbox we want and added the "members".  This will automatically add the mailbox / calendar to those users Outlook for PC application. 
   
2. Log into OWA with an account that has permission to the Shared Mailbox / Room that was just created.  Click the user account in the top right corner.  Click the "Open another mailbox..." option.
   
   
   
3. Type in the name of the mailbox / room and ensure it finds it in the list.  If you don't have the proper permissions then you'll get an error "Something went wrong".  It can take some time after assigning permissions to yourself before they properly propagate.
4. The mailbox will open in a new window.  Open the calendar.
5. Click the Share button at the top middle.  This will open up the "Share this calendar:Calendar" window.
6. Search for the person you want to add and give them the proper permission level.  Then click "Share"
   
7. This will send an email invitation to the user. They will need to open the email invitation from a mobile device!
   
   
   
8. From iOS native app the calendar is listed.
   
9. Or from the Outlook for iOS / Android
   
10. If the user wants to remove the calendar they can click on the i / information option on the right side (iOS) or settings gear (Outlook for iOS / Android) and at the bottom is the remove option.

Hopefully MS will give the option of having these calendars auto deploy to mobile device same or similar to the way it does with outlook for PC in the future.

Veeam Backup Error Code 32768

Last night we received the following error on a previously working server.

Failed to create VM recovery checkpoint (mode: Veeam application-aware processing) Details: Job failed (''). Error code: '32768'.

Failed to create VM recovery snapshot, VM ID 'f74ddb15-6900-4f62-ad2a-31ed600531f1'.  

Environment:

Host: Windows Server 2016

VM: Windows Server 2016 - hosting Quickbooks database manager and Azure AD Connect

Changes:

Several updates had been applied to the server the day prior.  Additionally, AD Connect had been updated to version 1.1.750

Additional error from eventvwr: 

Log Name:      Application

Source:        VSS

Event ID:      8229

Task Category: None

Level:         Warning

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Description:

A VSS writer has rejected an event with error 0x800423f4, The writer experienced a non-transient error.  If the backup process is retried,

the error is likely to reoccur.

. Changes that the writer made to the writer components while handling the event will not be available to the requester. Check the event log for related events from the application hosting the VSS writer. 

Some googling ended up with this hit: http://www.insidetechnologies.eu/en/blog/veeam-backup-replication-9-5-error-code-32768/

Open the appwiz.cpl, select "Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB" and repair.  This will require a reboot.

We are now able to create checkpoints of the VM again without issue.