This Monday, 13th of January 2025 was a bad day for sysadmins. Outlook and other Microsoft 365 / Office Apps would crash upon start because of a new update pushed by Microsoft. The message says something about react-navis-win32.dll missing. The only fix is to install the December 2024 Updates to fix the issue.

This configuration XML File install the December 2024 updates. Beware: This configuration is for Windows Server 2016 RDS and note that automatic updates are disabled.

<Configuration ID="e2abcd00-6229-40cc-be2d-e3a8ff5efb34">
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32" Channel="Broad">
    <Product ID="O365BusinessRetail">
      <Language ID="de-de" />
      <Version ID="16.0.17328.20670"/>
      <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Teams" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />
  <Property Name="SCLCacheOverride" Value="0" />
  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="0" />
  <Property Name="FORCEAPPSHUTDOWN" Value="FALSE" />
  <Property Name="DeviceBasedLicensing" Value="0" />
  <Updates Enabled="FALSE" />
  <RemoveMSI />
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

To download data hit setup.exe /download configuration.xml

To install execute setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

References:

https://borncity.com/win/2025/01/13/microsoft-outlook-365-or-other-ms-365-apps-are-dropping-suddenly-errors/

If you want to publish your Web App to the internet, you ideally should not directly NAT port 443 (or you custom HTTPS port) to you internal server. Instead, there should be a Reverse Proxy in a DMZ that accepts requests and then routes them to the internal server. You need to configure a Reverse Proxy with nginx or IIS.

Here is how you can do it with IIS.

Install IIS Role in Server Manager (Add Roles and Features > Web Server (IIS)

Download and install URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing (ARR)

https://iis-umbraco.azurewebsites.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite

https://iis-umbraco.azurewebsites.net/downloads/microsoft/application-request-routing

In IIS Manager, stop Default Website:

Create a new Website:

Make sure you configure your parameters. The host name should be the public DNS name.

Now open URL Rewrite and create a new rule.

Enter the ip of the internal server along with the port.

View Server Variables and add HTTP_HOST and HTTP_Authentication-Context-Policy as a variable.

Go back to rules and double click on the rule you just created.

Open server variables and add the application’s host name under HOST_NAME.

Add another variable with the name HTTP_Authentication-Context-Policy and value of internet

You should have variables.

Apply settings at the top right.

Next, select the server and open Configuration Editor:

Go to section System.Webserver/Proxy

Set preserveHostHeader to true and reverseRewriteHostInResponseHeaders to false

Apply changes at the top right.

Bonus: Increase timeout if bigger data chunks are sent to the client.

On the site, open Configuration Editor

Open Section system.web/Sessionstate

In stateNetworkTimeout increase value to 01:00 or higher.

Don’t forger to apply changes and restart IIS.

If your users are having issues logging in to your OpenSSH Server for Windows Server after the latest October 2024 Windows Updates, this might help you:

Firstly, configure logging so that you can see what is happening:

Change the config file:

C:\ProgramData\ssh\sshd_config

SyslogFacility LOCAL0

Restart OpenSSH Service

In my environment i saw this error:

userauth_pubkey: signature algorithm ssh-rsa not in PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms [preauth]

The solution is pretty straight forward. Add this line at the top of your OpenSSH config file:

C:\ProgramData\ssh\sshd_config

PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa

When a file is moved to a different folder on the same NTFS volume, its permissions don’t automatically update to match the destination folder’s settings. Instead, the file keeps its original permissions, which can lead to unexpected access issues if the destination has different security settings

To ensure files inherit the permissions of their new location when moved within the same NTFS volume, you can adjust the Windows Registry to change this behavior. Set the following registry key on the file server:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
MoveSecurityAttributes
REG_DWORD 0

EDIT:

This key does not work on newer Windows Server Operating Systems. It worked on Windows XP/Server 2003.

Having issue Azure AD joining a Windows 10 or 11 computer and getting error 8018000a? This script might help you. It deletes all keys except Context under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Enrollments

$EnrollmentsPath = “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Enrollments\”
$Enrollments = Get-ChildItem -Path $EnrollmentsPath
$DiscoveryServerFullUrls = @(“https://wip.mam.manage.microsoft.com/Enroll”)
Foreach ($Enrollment in $Enrollments) {
$EnrollmentObject = Get-ItemProperty Registry::$Enrollment
if ($EnrollmentObject.”DiscoveryServiceFullURL” -in $DiscoveryServerFullUrls ) {
$EnrollmentPath = $EnrollmentsPath + $EnrollmentObject.”PSChildName”
Remove-Item -Path $EnrollmentPath -Recurse
& “C:\Windows\System32\deviceenroller.exe /c /AutoEnrollMDM”
}
}

References:

https://jocha.se/blog/tech/azure-ad-mdm-intune-error-8018000a