Remotely enable Remote Desktop to connect to a remote PC

Occasionally you need to get something done on a remote computer (or a clients computer) but the computer doesn’t have an easy way for you to connect to it. Luckily, if you have admin rights to the remote computer, you can still connect without needing to turn on remote desktop before hand. To do that you will just need to download a little tool called PsExec (Available here). PsExec is a Microsoft tool part of their PsTools, the beauty of it is that it is portable and can be run from anywhere.

Once you have PsExec download you just need to open a command prompt and browse to the folder with psexec.exe. Once the command prompt is open, type in this command and it will enable remote desktop on the machine you specify.

psexec \\machinename reg add “hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server” /f /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Make sure you replace “machinename” with the computer you are trying to control remotely. Once this command has run you should now be able to connect with the Remote Desktop client (mstsc.exe) to the remote computer.

Fix client machines not appearing in WSUS Console

Depending on your imaging method some clients may not show up on your WSUS console, and refuse to check for updates. Since starting my new job I’ve seen this occur on machines which have been imaged with a non-sysprepped image. I quickly whipped up a script to reset some settings and forcing the machine to contact your WSUS server and retrieve a new Client Id and thus show up in your console.

Dim objShell, strKeyPath, strValueName,strComputer

set objShell = wscript.createObject("wscript.shell")

const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")

strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate"
strValueName = "SUSClientIdReset"


objRegistry.GetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strKeyPath, strValueName, dwValue
IF (dwValue = "1") Then
            'do nothing
      Else
            objRegistry.DeleteValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,strKeyPath,"SusClientId"
            objRegistry.DeleteValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,strKeyPath,"SusClientIdValidation"

   Set colServiceList = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_Service where Name = 'wuauserv'")

   For Each objService in colServiceList
     If objService.State = "Running" Then
     objService.StopService()
     Wscript.Sleep 10000
     objService.StartService()
     End If
   Next
        objShell.Run("wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow ")
   	Wscript.Sleep 10000   
        objShell.Run("wuauclt /r /reportnow")

        'Set reg value for SUSClientIdReset for checking against later.
   	dwValue = "1"
        objRegistry.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strKeyPath, strValueName, dwValue
End If

Run that on the effected machine with Admin Rights and the client will eventually appear in your WSUS Console.

As for the cause, the master image was joined to the domain and tested. During that time received group policy settings which included WSUS and contacted the server settings it’s clientId.

Hope that helps.

Configuring SharePoint 2007 to accept blocked file types

One of my clients using SharePoint 2007 were uploading some files to their site recently and got the following error:

The following file(s) have been blocked by the administrator

By going through Central Administration, I was able to unblock the file and allow them to upload the particular file to the library they were wanting uploading to. After opening up Central Admin, Click on the Operations Tab and look at the Security Configuration Section. Under it you will see Blocked File types (Forth Down), click on it. This by default selects your default site, if required change this. You will now have a large list showing all of the blocked file extensions, allowing you to add and remove them from the list.

In this case we wanted to allow MSI files so they could deploy a setup file through SharePoint as a storage point should users need to re-install. Remove the offending file type and click OK which takes you back to the operations page.

Simple as that, now going back into your SharePoint site, you can see that the file type has now been allowed and can be uploaded to the libraries you are using under the site it was enabled for.