And, now for something completely different: Let me tell you a positive tech support story. It's about a manufacturer that has provided me with quality tech support time after time. Some of you are going to be surprised, but Microsoft has one of the best IT tech support programs in the world. What's the catch? You have to pay for it.

I'm an Exchange Server nut. For the past ten years, since Exchange server first came out, I've published an edition of my book, "Mastering Exchange Server" for Sybex and now John Wiley and Sons. I do a new addition with each new version of the electronic messaging software. I run an Exchange server in my office. I've given accounts to a few of my friends so that I have to be serious about keeping the server up and running. One of my favourite uses for the server is to support remote access with both Blackberry and Pocket PC PDAs.

Remote email with Exchange Server and a Pocket PC. (From "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2003," John Wiley and Sons, 2003)

Though I've gone through five servers since the first one, aside from a few business DSL problems, the server has only been down about 10 times in the past 10 years. Usually the downtimes are relatively short and mostly for upgrades to the server itself or to the next version of Exchange. However, once, due to an Active Directory (AD) screw up, the server was down for over eight hours and that's when I found out how good Microsoft's IT support is. Basically, AD is where everything about a Windows network is stored: information on the network hierarchy, network nodes, hardware and user rights, permissions and privileges, passwords, etc.

You might think that with all those books under my belt I know everything about both Windows and Exchange Servers and would never have to fall back on Microsoft support. No way. First, both products are constantly being updated. I don't always know immediately what's new and sometimes an update can interact badly with existing software or settings. Second, my expertise doesn't extend deeply into AD. Even though I watched Exchange 4's directory morph into AD, I just haven't had the time to keep up with all the complexity functionality Microsoft piled into AD in Windows 2000 and 2003.

However, explaining my problem with AD was simple. Suddenly workstations and servers on my network couldn't see or contact each other, but only in some circumstances. Users couldn't get email and workstations lost access to network shares.

Without missing a beat once I understood what was wrong, I called MS IT support with my American Express card in hand. A triage staffer quickly took my credit card info (charge $245 - week days 6 AM to 6 PM) and collected information on my problem. Within 5 minutes I was in-touch with a first-level support person. He clearly was from India and it was a bit difficult for me to understand him every now and then. After I asked him to speak more slowly all was fine.

Within five minutes he understood my problem and put me on hold while he obviously checked a special version of the Microsoft Knowledgebase that's only available to support staff. He was back in about three minutes and asked that we use NetMeeting to connect him to a domain controller (DC) on my network so he could begin checking out AD. Connecting took all of 2 minutes and he started immediately looking at AD. I could see everything he was doing on the monitor of the DC. After about 10 minutes, the support tech said he needed to take what he had discovered and discuss it with a more senior person. He promised to call back and asked that I leave the AD computer connected through NetMeeting.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Over the next 10 minutes, the techs accessed AD, looked around at other things and ran a few diagnostic tests. Then the senior tech called back. He said that some data in AD had gotten corrupted and that there were also some apparent anomalies on the Exchange server. He wasn't sure why, but all I cared about was getting back in service. He asked for permission to try some things, but asked that I first backup the DCs and the Exchange server database. After that he proceeded to fix a bunch of things on both the Windows and Exchange servers and after about another hour, everything was up and running as it should be.

OK, I didn't really faint, but man was I relieved!