Exchange OWA pictures missing!

After a recent update, automatically applied to my server as of the last time it was active; likely incomplete, my OWA's pictures stoppped working.

I finally resolved the problem.

You can go through and debug every little error, if you'd like, and I recommend it, a smooth OWA is a happy OWA, but what I found the problem was, was pictures that were missing.

The confusing part about OWA and Exchange's web presence (Client Access), is that it's all so intricate that it's hard to decode. Take a look at your %programfiles% folder, under Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\Owa\

You'll see some base files and a series of folders, mine all started with 8.1.###.#

I have about five different versions of the OWA server installed. at least, that's what I'm gathering from the different version numbered folders. I would presume that the ASPX files in the root, dynamically load the newest OWA revision in the folder.

An easy and quick fix would be to revert back to an old OWA, just delete the newest (highest numbered) folder, and voila, it should work... My problem was that I was missing the pictures from owa and owa lite.

I since havn't gotten OWA premium working, but I suspect it might be a problem with my IE on this system, I have to do more investigating before I figure it out. Regardless, to fix a problem like the pictures, go into the 2nd newest folder (where I presume you had OWA access with everything working as expected) copy the themes folder, and paste it into your newest owa folder, combining it with the existing contents. There were css's in my existing folder, which I chose to keep, but I would assume that the damage would be negligible if one were to decide to "overwrite all" in this scenario.

if you've done this, or confirmed the folders have gif's and jpg's or whatever, in them, then you're dealing with a permissions issue. be sure to give the IIS user account (IUSR_ for IIS6 and IUSR for IIS7) read access to the theme folder, recursive. that should fix the problem of no pictures working, and should at least get OWA lite working.

getting a straight forward answer with all this has been difficult, but when I noticed the subfolders under themes, in the newest version of the owa directories, only contained one css file, and the older version numbers had many more files of varying types (mostly css, gif, etc), I decided to give it a go; and it worked!

Now, if I could only find that guide I had that explained how to use self-signed server certificates for Exchange ActiveSync...

I know it has to be done from the command line, since the GUI doesn't have the necessary options to create a self-signed cert for a dns entry that it does not technically inhabit. To explain, my server is located behind a NAT firewall, with port forwarding for port 443 (SSL). The servers address, according to the server is WIN-*random characters*.domain, where, to the rest of the internet (and any web-accessing Windows Mobile device) will see it as simply the domain name (no computer name). So, the server needs to issue a self-signed cert, that the public key is exportable to the device (for manual addition, RE: Trust), for the root domain.

I'll do the work for it later, when I have time, for now, OWA works, despite the certificate errors.