RDP on an Alternate Port

Sometimes we have multiple computers in location that we want direct RDP access to. The simplest solution is to change the port that RDP is listening on. This article has the necessary registry key: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759

Yesterday I did this on our new Windows 2008 e-mail server to allow outside access, but could not connect to the new port number or the old port number. It turns out that Windows Firewall was the culprit. I assumed that the Windows firewall rule would be hooked in to the service executable. However, there is a rule with a hard coded TCP port instead.

So, when you change the RDP port number, remember to create a new incoming rule that allows that port.

IE8 HTTPS warning

Over the last few days I've been using Outlook Web access to read e-mail. A lot of the bulk mail messages I get have graphics in them. OWA uses https, be the graphic are using http. So, IE8 gives you a warning asking:

Do you want to veiw only the webpage content that was delivered
securely?

My instinct is to hit the Yes button to show the graphics. However, you need to select No.

However, you can disable this warning. The steps are located here: http://blog.httpwatch.com/2009/04/23/fixing-the-ie-8-warning-do-you-want-to-view-only-the-webpage-content-that-was-delivered-securely/

Links = File System Flexibility

I won't pretend to know the results of all the possible configuration options. However, I think that using links in the file system is a great way to expand space on an existing C: drive.

I have one workstation that I do 90% of my work on. This computer has a lot of apps and a ton of data (no lectures about the home server please). My 250GB drive is almost out of space and I'd like to increase performance of my VMs.

The MS courses use C:\Program Files\Microsoft Learning for the VMs. I don't have an option to move this. However, I can configure that path as a symbolic link to another location instead. So, my C:\Program Files\Microsoft Learning is now a link to V:\Microsoft Learning. This allows me to put all my VMs on a separate drive. If I get inspired later on, I may split the differencing drives from the base drives for even better disk performance.

The MKLink command creates the links.

For God Sakes, Plan for a Disaster

Two incidents recently drove home the importance of planning disaster recovery for me this week. One was a client. Sadly, the other was our server.

First the client. Like many clients, this one is using a USB drive for backup of a computer that does peer-to-peer sharing on the network. All of their accounting data is on this computer as well as other files. After a period of time they stopped doing the backup. You know the excuses, none are good, but all of us start to slack off over time.

So, the hard drive in this computer dies, no backup. We got lucky and after I moved the drive to a different computer, it was readable, and we got the data. But it was coming up as a hardware failure in diagnostics.

Now for our server. It is located in a basement. The water main in the basement broke and filled the basement with 6 feet of water. We did have a backup, but it was with the server. So, always do an offsite backup. Fortunately for us, all we lost was some configuration documentation and the billing info for the last month. We were able to recreate the billing info and we can figure out the documentation again.

We will not be caught like this again. We will be implenting a full offsite recovery plan. And it will be automated, so we can't get lazy about it.

Multiple instances of Excel

I do a lot of work with multiple spreadsheets, many of them open at the same time. It has always annoyed me that when you double-click a spreadsheet it opens in the same Excel window.

In the past I found that the work around was to open one spreadsheet. Then open Excel from the Start Menu and open the second spreadsheet from within the second instance of Excel. Another workaround on the web talked about disabling OLE in some way, but that one killed functionality I needed.

However today I found a better solution for me. I created a shortcut in the Send To menu that directs files to Excel. When I use this is opens in a second Excel instance.

Details on the Send To: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/customize-the-windows-vista-send-to-menu/

Still not quite as good as just double-clicking, but much better than a manual open of Excel.

Office 2007 Trial as a Marketing Tool

We have a relatively new client, in which we are replacing another support provider. A number of the computers have Office 2007 Trial version installed that is just now expiring. I am sure the point was to demo the software and make the sale, but there was no communication with the staff.

End results of installing trial software without a formal evaluation process:

• Staff are annoyed when trial software expires and ceases to work
• Productivity is lost while staff figure out they can still open documents manually in Office 2003, but not by just double-clicking the doc
• Client pays $$ for me to uninstall Office 2007
• No sale is made because no actual evaluation is done
• Waste of everyones time and $

Stop SBS from Shutting Down

We are currently migrating a client from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. We've joined the new computer to the the domain, and run DCpromo on the SBS 2003 computer to remove the DC status. However, after seven days, SBS 2003 will start giving an error stating that it needs to be a DC and will shut down every 60 minutes (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555087)! We need another few days to work on the migration.

The Microsoft recommended solution for this is to insert disc 1, run setup, and remove the SBS 2003 component. This will leave a plain Win 2003 server without the shutdown issue. However, when I attempted to do this, setup errored out indicating that I was trying to upgrade to an older version which was not possible. Removing service packs may have worked, but here is a faster work around taken from a guy named Alan (http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/af4fc3b4-bb50-4c5e-b09a-72ef2c3ac687)

I've found a slightly more elegant solution to this problem rather than just
aggressively killing the process until Windows gives up trying to start it
again, and I'd like to share it in the hope that Google will re-index and pick
it up for others to use. You may have noticed this service cannot be disabled
via the MMC snap-in.

My search term on google was: how to stop the SBCore
service. Anyway, down to business…

- Tools you'll need – Process Explorer from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplorer.mspx

As you probably know, you have a service called SBCore or "SBS Core Services",
which executes the following process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe. If you
kill it, it just restarts – and if you try and stop it you are told Access Denied.

If you fire up Process Explorer, you can select the process and Suspend it, now we can start to disable the thing. Run regedit and expand the nodes until you reach the following hive /key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SBCore Right click this, hit permissions and give the "Administrators" group on the local machine full access ( don't forget to replace permissions on child nodes ). F5 in regedit and you'll see all of the values and data under this key.

Select the "Start" DWORD and change it from 2 to 4 – this basically sets the service to the "Disabled" state as far as the MMC services snap-in (and windows for that matter) is concerned.

Next, adjust the permissions on the file C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe so that EVERYONE account is denied any sort of access to this file. Then go back to process explorer, and kill the sbscrexe.exe process, if it doesn't restart – congratulations!

Load up the services MMC snap-in and you should find that "SBS Core Services" is stopped and marked as Disabled.

Enjoy,
Alan :)

Note: When you run Process Explorer through Terminal Services, you are unable to suspend the process. I had to go on site to perform this process.