Enable Remote Desktop Logon
Posted by: ds in Windows Desktop on February 25th, 2012
To allow automatic logon to a computer running Windows XP through Remote Desktop, follow these steps while logged on as an Administrator: 1.Click Start, click Run, type MMC, and then press ENTER.
2.Click File, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in.
3.Click Add, select Group Policy, click Add, and then click Finish.
4.Click Close, and then click OK.
5.Navigate to the following directory:
Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Terminal Services/Encryption and Security
6.Double-click Always prompt client for password upon connection.
7.Click the Disabled box, and then click OK. You may now quit the MMC snap-in. Remote Desktop clients should now be able to connect to this Windows XP computer using the automatic logon feature of the Remote Desktop client.
Redirect new computers from default container in active directory
Posted by: ds in Deployment, Microsoft Network Admin, Microsoft Server on November 21st, 2011
This is posted lots of other places but this is easier to find:
Run the Redircmp.exe file at a command prompt by using the following syntax, where container-dn is the distinguished name of the organizational unit that will become the default location for newly created computer objects that are created by down-level APIs:
redircmp container-dn container-dn
Redircmp.exe is installed in the %Systemroot%\System32 folder on Windows Server 2003-based or newer computers. For example, to change the default location for a computer that is created with earlier-version APIs such as Net User to the OU=mycomputers container in the CONTOSO.COM domain, use the following syntax:
C:\windows\system32>redircmp ou=mycomputers,DC=contoso,dc=com
PXE deployment doesn’t find WDS server
Posted by: ds in Deployment, Microsoft Server, Windows Desktop on November 21st, 2011
You’ve had your WDS server working for a while now, but suddenly it appears to stop responding to PXE boot requests. There are no error messages anywhere. WTF? What likely has happened is that the WDS server is running on a server that also has DNS running on it and the WDS and DNS services have overlapped ports with DNS overriding WDS. To fix this on a 2008 R2 server do the following: Set the UdpPortPolicy value in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer\Parameters to 0.
IE 9 with romaing profiles, redirected folders and Vista/7
Posted by: ds in Compatability, Vista/7, Windows Desktop on August 30th, 2011
IE 9 has a problem when running in vista or Windows 7 and using roming profiles and redirected folders (you know, the configuration the MS tells you to do if your users move around???) Anyway, this one manifests it’s self as printing from IE 9 only prints a header and footer and nothing else. the fotter refers to a path in the user’s appdata\local\temp\low folder. when you look for that folder, you find that it didn’t get created. If you create it manually, it still doesn’t work. that’s because the integrity level isn’t set by default on anything that you create yourself. there are some MS Mr. fix-it patches available under KB973479, but they only work on the user/coputer combination you are on, they do not work at the roaming profile level. currently the only way around this is to turn off IE’s protected mode. (I know it’s not the best thing to do - but until MS un-breaks this, it’s all I’ve figured out how to fix it globally. You can turn off IE protected mode via GPO Computer (not user) policy. Administrative Templates, Windows components, Internet Explorer, Internet Control Panel, security Page, Internet Zone. Enable the policy and set protected mode to disabled.
Mapped Drives in Vista/7 when elevated
Having finally been fed up with always having my mapped drives dissapear every time Vista/7 UAC wants elevated credentials and it being hard to search on the solution. Here it is. It involves a registry change at the computer level. The good news is you can make those changes pretty easy now with GPP being built in to Vista/7. so here is the value that needs to be added:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
DWORD Value name: EnableLinkedConnections
Value of: 1
IBM Client Access in Windows 7
Posted by: ds in Compatability, User Privileges on April 19th, 2011
Yet another older program having issues in windows 7. This time the program runs well enough, it’s just that it doesn’t seem to complete the installation and you don’t find that out until you log in as a non-admin user. You get a message “An Administrator must logon after restarting windows to complete the installation” . The wierd part is you don’t get that mesage when logging on as an admin. It seems that UAC is getting in the way of client access install finishing up registering some DLLs that you don’t really need anyway. To help CA install cleanup you simply need to go to c:\programs files\ibm\client access\ and run cwbsreg.exe as administrator. That will register four dlls, clear the marker file and remove it’s self from the HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run key. This is for Client access 5.3 It may be applicable to other versions but I’ve not tested that.
ds
SQL 2008 Sillyness
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Server, User Privileges on June 29th, 2010
In server 2008 (and probably other versions as well) if you need to add a user or group local to the server as an SQL user, you get the following lovely error: “Error 15401: Windows NT user or group ‘%s’ not found. Check the name again. ” Domain accounts add fine, but not local accounts. Well, SOME local accounts add fine but other ones don’t Now isn’t that silly? Turns out that any predefined local accounts or groups like “administrators” or “system” need to use the domain “BUILTIN” and not the server name as the domain preface. Problem solv-ed.
ds
Funky DNS resolution with cisco VPN and Vista/7
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Network Admin, Vista/7 on February 25th, 2010
You have Vista or Windows 7 and finally got the latest version of Cisco VPN client (5.0.06.0110) to install and apparently work. All is well until you try to get to some other internal host after a few minutes or more. Suddenly no other hosts than the original host resolve! You ping your internal DNS server by address and it responds. NSlookup reports timeouts and cant resolve the host name for the internal DNS server. What the heck is going on here? Is it another Cisco “issue”? The clue is that everything works fine on XP but not on Vista/7. So what changed between XP and Vista/7? Well, it turns out that Microsoft rewrote the IP stack for Vista/7 and among other things added a nifty little feature called autotune. This is supposed to automatically tune the recieve window size based on latenacy, usage and the color of your underware. So guess what? Since you don’t resolve internal names over the VPN very much (and you have green undies on), name resolution gets tuned down to practically nothing. So when you try to use it, it times out. The fix is to turn off autotune. You can do this as follows:
Disable TCP Auto-Tuning
1.Open elevated command prompt with administrator’s privileges.
2.Type the following command and press Enter:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
Enable TCP Auto-Tuning
1.Open elevated command prompt with administrator’s privileges.
2.Type the following command and press Enter:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal
How about that law of unintended consequences???
Restoring Exchange 2003 from a remote Backupexec 9.1 server
Posted by: ds in Exchange, Microsoft Server on October 20th, 2009
So this seems like it should be a fairly straight forward task. I mean there are a ton of BE backups going on every day and a ton of exchange backups in those. And I seriously doubt that all of the backups are running from the exchange server (unless it an SBS - but that’s a totally different animal). But documantation and gotchas are seriously lacking here. So, follow the bellow exactly! Do not skip anything otherwise you will go directly to jail and will owe $200.
1) Install the base OS.
a) Do a parallel install or scratch install to a folder that is NOT c:\windows on the server to be restored
2)Install the BE remote agent on the exhcnage server and make sure it is running!
IMPORTANT! Don’t forget this - bad things happen!
3) Restore the remote server OS from the BE server.
Only include the C:, D: volumes and system state. Do NOT include the exchange stores.
Before restarting, edit the Boot.ini to add back the parallel install. IMPORTANT because it’s likely the restore will munch one or more of the drivers
4) If the server does not restart, it’s probably the video driver.
restart in safe mode, then reinstall the correct video driver - even if it says it’s already there.
5) Once successfully restarted, start the Exchange store.
Make sure the stores are dismounted
In the store properties, check the setting to allow restore.
6) restore the exchange store from BE.
7) there may be misc stuff to cleanup but it should be mostly good to go.
what can happen???
If you forget to install or don’t have the remote agent running on the remote server, BE will restore the system state to the local server! No shit!
It won’t tell you it did that - it will only fail on the volume restores but say the system state was successful. If you see something like that - DO NOT REBOOT!�
Immediately restore the local system state from BE. If you screwed that up, then you’ll need to do a parallel OS install.�
You will need to remove (or rename the existing MSSQL$dackupexec instance and make sure when you install BE, you install to a different directory.
Unless you want to recatalog the tape (yikes!) copy all of the *.ui1 files from the backupexec/nt/catalog folder to the new install.
Then, you will need to service pack the OS up to the level the orginal server was. Then restore in Directory Restore mode and restore the system state. Oh, and you have to restore the entier C: volume along with the system state to get your registry and SAM back. Otherwise it will fail to restore with a cryptic error (eventhough it lets you select only the system state - how lmae is that??)
ds
MDT 2008 Lite Touch fails with wierd network errors - sometimes
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Network Admin, Microsoft Server, Vista/7, Windows Desktop on October 20th, 2009
You may not put two and two together but they last time you updated MDT (because MS told you you needed to… (yeah so much for trusting MS)) you actually broke it. Now you get a Network Timeout (or a wierd access denied error) in Windows PE 2.1 when it’s trying to launch the Lite touch scripts. Oh, and another thing about launching LiteTouch, don’t have a Windows boot CD (or any CD in the CD drive. For some wierd reason WPEInit will see that and fail to launch the LiteTouch Script. (no I havn’t figured out why yet)
Symptoms:
You get the following error message in MDT 2008 Lite Touch Deployment even though you have the correct nic drivers in Windows PE and the correct bootstrap.ini settings. “A connection to the deployment share \\Server\Distribution$ could not be made. The Deployment will not proceed” upon further investigation you find out that you get an access denied error when you try to list the \\server\distribuiton$\ directory. BUT! if you do a Net Use mapping to the folder, it works just fine! WTF? AND, it works on some models of computer but not on others. More WTF?
Cause:
A network initializion timeout issue in wpeinit.exe in Windows PE 2.1 causes MDT 2008 Lite Touch Deployments to fail.
Workaround:
Give WIndows PE 2.1 a few more seconds by editing startnet.cmd on your LiteTouch_x86.wim (or iso) to look like below. (It’s in the windows/system32 directory) (Use Imagex /mountrw LiteTouch.wim 1 d:\image to mount the WIM) (Don’t forget to ImageX /Unmount d:\image when you’re done)
startnet.cmd
wpeutil InitializeNetwork
ping localhost or Pause (or any other command that does nothing but takes a few seconds to complete)
wpeinit
If you want the Deployment Workbench to include the updated startnet.cmd every time you update the Deployment Point just follow the below steps
Configure MDT to use the updated startnet.cmd
- Create a folder named ExtraFiles\Windows\System32 in the distribution share and copy the updated startnet.cmd to it.
- In the Deployment Workbench, right-click the Deployment Point and select Properties.
- In the Windows PE Tab, in the Extra directory to add textbox, type in D:\ExtraFiles
- Click OK
- Regenerate the WIM files and don’t forget to rebuild the Boot images in WDS otherwise your changes won’t take effect.
ds