You might see the error message outlined in subject while installing/uninstalling software on windows 2003 computer by connecting to terminal services. We all know that application installation has certain limitations when it comes to terminal services (anyone know why?). In such cases if you still want to install/uninstall the application on these terminal services enabled servers, you need to choose one of the following methods.

If this the requirement is just one of the case, then option#1 best suits you.

Option#1:

start mstsc with /console or /admin option and then connect to the server. This allows you to connect to the console of the server directly eliminating terminal services piece from you way.

Go to start -> Run -> type “mstsc /admin /v:servername” and click OK if you are using RDP client v6 or above

Go to start ->Run -> type “mstsc /console /v:servername” and click OK if you are using legacy version of RDP client.

Option#2:

If your administrators are expected to install applications on servers by connecting via terminal services, then you need to make sure that application installation is allowed. You can do it via group policies.

“computer configuration” -> “administrative templates” -> “windows components” -> “windows installer” -> “allow admin to install from terminal server session” should be enabled

Hope this helps.

I am excited to say that today my blog has crossed 1lakh visits(1,00,000). It’s been close to 1.5 years since I started this blog and I am happy that this blog helped so some of my fellow sys admins in the world.

The major motive to start this blog is to help the people in internet who search for information. I depend on a lot on public forums, blogs, and articles to resolve various issues that arise with technology in the firm where I work. Since I am benefited from the experience of others who is sharing it, I wanted to make my experience online so that it can help others and save some time and efforts for them. On this wonderful moment I want to make some changes to the way I blog.

So far, I am the only author in this blog. Looking at the responses I am receiving and thrust for knowledge/information in internet, I want to expand the scope of it. That is providing more and more information to my blog readers and also to people who land on my site from Google search. Well, I know that this is not an easy task. I have to increase the time if I decide to continue work on this blog alone. Instead, I have some plans in mind which I want to implement to make this blog richer in terms of information.

My ideas are like this…

1. Invite my friends to share the information: It is fortunate that most of my friends and college juniors are system administrators by profession. They work in different fields of system administrations like windows, UNIX, and networks. I want to take their help and encourage keeping it in the blog in very simple terms (saves time for them and information is online).
2. Invite tips/Tricks: While I search for information on internet, I come across, some interest tips which generally benefits system administrators. Most of the times, I try to put it on my blog so that it is helpful to my blog readers. While this is true with me, some of my friends told me, they too come across such tips but don’t have time (or laziness?) to keep it online. If you are also like my friends, don’t hesitate to just send me an email with brief description of the tip/trick/tool that you came across. I will take care of rest and keep it online with on behalf of you (of course, credit goes to you only) when I find some time.
3. UserGroup in the place where I live: Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a explicit System Administrators User Group in the place I live (Hyderabad, India)where as other major cities in INDIA are very well running some System Administrator’s user groups to share their knowledge and  experience. So, I am planning to have one for system administrators in Hyderabad as well. I know, this is not an easy task and achievable with ones interest. It will see success only if other people in my niche here feels the same vision as mine.

Thanks for reading my long rambling of thoughts. Thanks again for being part of my blog and success to achieve this wonderful 1Lakh milestone.

Please keep sharing your valuable feedback and ideas.

I wish all my dear Indians a very happy INDEPENDENCE DAY.

[Guest Post]

This guest post was provided by Lee Munson on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. More information: GFI vulnerability scanning software.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Nowadays many companies will scan their corporate networks in order to identify security issues. A vulnerability scanner may be employed once per year or, preferably, more often, and can be run either in-house or by a third party.

Typically, the results that come back from the vulnerability scan are used to identify and rectify any security concerns, as well as to remain compliant with the company’s own internal policies and procedures.

The Regulations

There is a whole raft of regulations that either do, or could, have a significant effect on information processing and security. The key regulations for the USA, Europe and the United Kingdom –include:

• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
• Health Insurance Portability Act 1996 (HIPAA)
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 (SOX)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 1999 (GLBA)
• Family Educational Rights And Privacy Act (FERPA)
• The EU Data Protection Directive
• The EU Directive On Privacy And Electronic Communications
• The Computer Misuse Act 1990
• UK Data Protection Act 1998

Many of the above regulations either require, or at the least imply the need for, regular vulnerability scanning across the organisation’s network.

The Consequences Of Non-Compliance

There are, of course, many possible penalties associated with non-compliance of the regulations listed above. The first such penalties that you would likely think of would be immediate, legal and financial in nature but there would also be a longer-term concern as well.

In business, reputation is everything, and a company that is not compliant with the regulations will suffer as a result, either through that knowledge becoming known to prospective partners and customers, or as a direct consequence of a breach occurring.

Vulnerability Scanning and Compliance

By using a vulnerability scanner – that also includes the ability to patch vulnerabilities and provide audits – on a frequent basis, a company can detect security threats before they can affect the network. This is especially important in an environment where hardware and users are changing regularly.

Network security is a fluid process that changes all the time with new threats emerging on a regular basis. A vulnerability scanner is an essential tool for combating these new threats as these would be updated regularly by their vendors in pretty much the same way that antivirus programs are updated with new virus definition files.

Another benefit to running regular vulnerability scans is that it helps with security audits and, therefore, helps you meet compliance with the regulations mentioned above.

In the future, the need for compliance is only going to grow due to the fact that there will undoubtedly be a raft of new regulations being released and, also, because the existing regulations will almost certainly begin to encompass more and more companies, regardless of their size.

A vulnerability scanner is your virtual security consultant and can aid your organisation to pass all the appropriate legal audits as well as your company’s own internal policies, protecting all your customers’, partners’ and employees’ data and privacy in the process.

It’s been more than 2 years since I am blogging. I am not a regular blogger, sometimes I gave a gap of months also. I just happened to see how my blog is performing in internet and noticed that today it got highest no. of visits. I just thought of sharing it with my blog readers. The average visits for my blog is between 250-300 per day. Today’s visits are 450+.

I am happy that, my blog posts are helping people everyday. And this is inspiring me to write more and more posts. Happy blogging.

I live in Hyderabad, south part of INDIA. I received below message from one of my friend today in SMS form to my mobile. While the explosion new may be correct, the side effects and spread of effects through rain seems to be a nonsense for me. I am guessing it is hoax. News of this kind of hoax makes people panic. I am not sure who is trying to spread this message and make people pass it to everyone. If this news is true, Govt would have notified its citizens to take precautionary measures. I haven’t heard any such thing from Govt or news channels yet.

I am searching over internet to find the validity of news.

A nuclear power plant in Fukumi, Japan exploded at 4:30AM today. If it rains tomorrow, don’t go outside. If you are outside, make sure you get protection from rain, It’s acid rain. Don’t let it touch you. You may lose your hair or may get cancer.

Pass this message to all whom you care.

Do you have any related news about this? Do you think it is really a hoax? write in comments section

Changing the password is one of the regular activities for a typical System Administrator. It is not an easy task unless you have required tools in your tool kit. If you have changed one of your domain admin password, you need to find the places(be it services or scheduled tasks) where you have saved it and update password there. If you have 1000 servers, then you will endup updating/scanning remote server’s services/scheduled tasks one after another unless you have some home grown scripts to serve this purpose. 

Well, I have some good news if you are still spending long hours to change the passwords. Today I came across a new utility called SSTUM (Service and Scheduled Task User Manager) which helps you in changing the password in remote services or scheduled Tasks with less efforts.

A few things I notices about this tool are…

1) Easy to use and saves lot of time
2) Input can be a computer list or you can make selection from active directory
3) Has an option to restart service after changing the password — pretty useful
4) Support exporting of results to some text file
 5) Supports changing the username as well.

More details about this tool and download location are available at http://martin77s.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/service-and-scheduled-task-user-manager/

Hope this definitely helps.

[For a change today I am posting some non-technical stuff]

Today I received this short story as a forward from my friend. Thought of posting it here.

Here goes the story….

A shopkeeper watching over his shop is really surprised when he sees a dog coming inside the shop, He shoos him away. But later, the dog is back inside again. So he goes over to the dog and notices that it has a note in its mouth. He takes the note and it reads “Can I have 12 soaps and a shampoo bottle, please. The money is with the dog.” The shopkeeper looks inside the dogs mouth and to his surprise there is a 100 rupees note in his mouth. So he takes the money and puts the soap, shampoo and change in a bag, and then places it in the dogs mouth.

The shopkeeper is so impressed, and since it is the closing time, he decides to follow the dog. The dog is walking down the street, when it comes to the zebra crossing; he waits till the signal turns green. He walks across the road till the bus stop. He waits on the stop and looks up the timetable for the bus. The shopkeeper is totally out of his mind as the dog gets into the bus and sits on a vacant seat. The shopkeeper followed the dog. The dog waits for the conductor to come to his seat. He gives the change to the conductor and shows him the neck belt to keep the ticket. The shopkeeper is almost fainting at this sight and so are the other people in the bus.

The dog then moves to the front exit of the door and waits for the bus stop to arrive, looking outside. As soon as the stop is in sight he wags his tail to inform the driver to stop. Then not even waiting for the bus stop to arrive the dog jumps out and runs to the house nearby. It opens an big iron gate and rushes towards the door. As it approaches the door, he changes his mind and walks towards the garden. The dog walks up to the window and beats his head several times on the window. It then walks back to the door and waits. The shopkeeper maintaining his senses walks up to the door and watched a big guy open the door.

The guy starts beating, kicking and abusing the dog. The shopkeeper is surprised and runs to stop the guy. the shopkeeper questions the guy “What in the heaven are you doing? The dog is a genius he could be famous in life.”

The guy responds “You call this clever? This is the 3rd time in this week that the dog has forgotten the door keys.”

The moral of the story: You may continue to exceed onlooker’s expectations… But will always fall short of the bosses expectation…

Today I came across this nice presentation on troubleshooting windows problem like sluggish performance and crazy behaviors. I recommend this video for Windows System administrator who are serious about developing their windows troubleshooting skills. I am big fan of Russinovich articles and have gone through some of his videos at PDC and they are awesome.  Happy learning….

When you login to GMail next time, visit “setting” at the right top corner which takes you to your account settings page. There after a bit scrolling down you can see option to set signatures which supports RichText now. That means, you can put your favorites(or you branding) images in your auto signature. It also help you to format your signature font/size to much granular level than before.

Google blog has more details about this feature.

ILO(Integrated Lights-out)  is a technology that enables system administrators to remote control the server even when it is powered down. After reading my previous post on same ILO topic, one of my X-colleague contacted me for some readymade script which he can use to get the ILO version information. There this script took birth.

This scripts gets the ILO version of given remote server.

$doc = New-object System.XML.XMLDocument
$doc.Load(“http://server-ilo-name/xmldata?item=All“)
write-host $doc.RIMP.MP.PN

Similarly you know server model using below code

$doc = New-object System.XML.XMLDocument
$doc.Load(“http://server-ilo-name/xmldata?item=All“)
write-host $doc.RIMP.HSI.SPN

Hope this information helps you.