Remotely enable Terminal Services..

[warp3]

This morning me and my college took a brand new server (and some switches) to the datacenter.

 

In our case, that means a 45 minute drive.

 

 

 

Arrived, put it into our rack and started installing windows 2003.

 

After that, the usual windows updates, ordered an extra tcadmin license and installed the tcadmin remote monitor.

 

 

 

Run a few tests and after everything looked ok we headed back to the office.

 

 

 

Nothing wierd so far eh? well...

 

when back at the office we realized we missed ONE item..

 

ENABLE TERMINAL SERVICES FOR REMOTE ACCESS ! duh.

 

 

 

In case someone else makes the same stupid mistake, here's how to enable it remotely:

 

 

 

Start regedit and select : Connect Network Registry

 

(remote regedit)

 

If your servers are in AD (not recommended if you're just using it for games) just browse to the name, else type its IP in the searh form.

 

 

 

Once connected, browse in the remote registry to:

 

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server

 

 

 

Select the key "fDenyTSConnection" and change the 1 to 0

 

Close regedit.

 

 

 

If you need to reboot (we didn't need to) then remotely reboot the server by:

 

shutdown -m \\ip.address.of.server -r

 

 

 

It beats a 45 minute (or longer.. i love traffic jams) drive back to the dc just to checkmark that option

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ECF]

Doesn't your DC provide on-site hand and eyes service for cases like this?

 

 

 

Most Datacenters provide this type of service for free.

[warp3]

They do, but thats limited to (hard) reboots, not anything on the servers themselves

 

Luckily the remote registry trick worked.

[ECF]

All that counts is you got back in!

[Chew]

excellent tip!