Latest notes

Creating a Windows Firewall Exception for VNC through GPO

This article got me started: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490626.aspx

The GPO is located at: Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Network, Network Connections, and then Windows Firewall

I then used the Domain Profile section and enabled: Windows Firewall: Define port exceptions

The configuration text string I used was:

5900:TCP:10.10.1.0/24:enabled:VNC

This worked for me and got my systems creating the exception.

Great SBS Setup Links

First a white paper with all the info needed to move the various data stores to another drive, an absolute necessity in my book.  It’s best to plan on doing these changes early so you don’t run into issues later with low or no disk space.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/maintain/movedata.mspx

Second, info on how to limit the amount of memory used by the SBS Monitoring process – use with caution, but I’ve yet to see any bad results, it just limits the process from using up way too much memory:

C:\>osql -E -S SERVERNAME\SBSMONITORING
1> sp_configure ‘show advanced options’,1
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
Configuration option ‘show advanced options’ changed from 0 to 1. Run the
RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> sp_configure ‘max server memory’,256
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system
administrator.
Configuration option ‘max server memory (MB)’ changed from 2147483647 to 256.
Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> exit
C:\>

Note: Replace SERVERNAME  and the 256 setting with values to match your system – I usually keep it at 256.  I find without this setting, an SBS system left on it’s own will use a huge amount of RAM associated with this process

Third, this is really just a subset of the first white paper, but focuses only on moving Exchange databases to another location: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915

Finally, a couple of links helpful when you’re moving from a non-SBS domain to an SBS server:

How to install Small Business Server 2003 in an existing Active Directory domain – KB 884453

and a more general:

How to replace single domain controller in domain with a single domain controller? – KB 555549

Remotely enable Remote Desktop

When you need to RD into a remote PC, but that PC doesn’t have RD enabled, here’s a quick fix – BUT BE WARNED – MESSING WITH THE REGISTRY CAN CAUSE UNEXPECTED BEHAVIOR – DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

First download PSTools to get the PSExec tool:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

On the local PC, execute:

psexec \\COMPUTERNAME  reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" /f /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Replace COMPUTERNAME with the name or IP address of the remote PC.

Then just do a remote restart: 

shutdown -m \\COMPUTERNAME -r

I also like to do a:

ping COMPUTERNAME -t

That will keep pinging indefinitely, so you can see when the PC restarts and comes back up.