In-Place Upgrade from Lync 2013 running Windows Server 2008r2. Services failing to start

Within this blog post is a issue that we’ve seen a couple of times along the way. However finding information on the issue is hard to come by hence this blog post.

So the scenario is.. the client is doing an in-place upgrade from lync 2013 to Skype for business 2015 running on windows 2008r2 OS. **Note: this issue has only been seen on 2008r2 OS..

The In-place upgrade to Skype for Business Server 2015 completed successfully, however when issuing “Start-CsWindowsService” or “Start-CsPool” the Skype for Business Front End Service failed to start with the following error:

it was also noticed that the windows fabric service was also failing to start.
I continued to troubleshooting the following areas:

1. Certificates – Checked for untrusted root certificates using the following PS commandlet:
Get-Childitem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject} | Format-List * | Out-File “c:\computer_filtered.txt”
2. Reset Pool Quorum using the following PS commandlet:
Reset-CsPoolRegistrarState –PoolFqdn POOLNAME –ResetType QuorumLossRecovery
3. Ran Install-CsDatabase PS commandlet to ensure backend DB’s was in sync with front end servers – Install-CsDatabase –Update –LocalDatabases
4. Rebooted FE
5. Re-ran bootstrapper.exe (Step2 from the deployment wizard)
6. Confirmed SQL DB’s across all three instances (RTC, RTCLOCAL & LYNCLOCAL) was accessible and online

None of the above helped, the RtcSrv service still failed to start.

After further investigation it would appear the Windows Firewall Service had been disabled. I set the service back to its default setting of “Automatic” and started the service.

Would you believe it, all Skype for Business Server 2015 services would now start!!!

Skype for Business Profile moving to Skype Online – Lync for Mac 2011 ‘adding, removing, tagging’ contacts issue

While im in the mood for another blog post, below is further information around Skype Online and the sketchy Lync for mac automatic supportability.

Ive been moving my profile between Skype for business Onprem and also Skype online and while this is a seamless transition to complete, lync for mac does grumble somewhat with moving your profile.

One of the main pain points of this profile move is the fact that contacts (your buddy lists) stop functioning as you would expect. For example when your profile is moved to SkypeOnline, you cease the ability in adding, moving and tagging of Lync user contacts???

Unfortunately to get this working you need powershell in the backend of the SkypeOnline to invoke some permissions. For some reason putting the profile online causes the UCS *unified contact store to have issues for your -identity

If you run the command get-csuserservicespolicy you should see the USC allowed set as false? so in general you should not be having any issues.?? go figure.!

the solution needed to get you past this issue is another powershell command which is detailed in this link

Once you’ve invoked rollback of your identity, the contacts in the SkypeOnline will start acting as normal.

Regards

Iain Smith

Lync and Skype for Mac -moving profile from SkypeOnline back to Skype OnPremise issues

Hello All

Based from experience ,below are details on how to fix your Lync for mac 2011 client or the new Skype for mac client when you have your SkypeFB profile in the 365 cloud then for whatever reason want to bring it back on-premises.

Recently, i’ve been in the Microsoft TAP program for SkypeOnline and more interestingly CloudPBX. Today however i wanted to complete some testing back on the server estate on premises, which to reverse this hybrid profile approach i had is a couple of clicks within the 365 tenant to bring my profile back onprem.

Unfortunately though the Lync/Skype for Mac client does not like this change and without manual intervention will never ever log you back into the client.

So the scenario above then the fix below.

Lync 2011 or Skype for Mac 2016 for MAC

Log out and quit Lync/Skype for Mac.
Go to Finder > press Command+Shift+G > type in /users/<MacUsername>/library >

delete the following files:
Caches > com.microsoft.Lync
Internet Plug-Ins > MeetingJoinPlugin.plugin
Keychains > all files beginning with OC__KeyContainer
Logs > Microsoft-Lync-x.log and Microsoft-Lync.log
Preferences > com.microsoft.Lync.plist
Preferences > ByHost > MicrosoftLyncRegistrationDB.xxxx.plist
Go to Finder > press Command+Shift+G > type in /users/<MacUsername>/documents > navigate to Microsoft User Data > delete the following folders: Microsoft Lync Data and Microsoft Lync History.
Open Keychain Access from /Applications/Utilities folder.
Delete all keychains startting with OC__KeyContainer.
In your Login keychain, delete all e-mail address certificates.
Finally, empty the Trash.

 

Thats it you should be now again fixed and able to log back into the client.

Iain Smith