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Remote Desktop not working on upgraded 2003 server

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by rnewman

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I have upgaded our last windows 2000 DC to 2003 using the 2003 standard server CD. Upon reboot I was not able to RDP into it. Checking the System properties in control panel, there was NO tab for "remote" where I might normally enable RDP for administration purposes. Found a simple newsgroup post and registered the "remotepg.dll" in the systemroot\system32 folder. Once I did that, the tab showed up, with the "allow users to.." checkbox checked. Still no dice. No internet connection sharing, so no firewall is on, nor is there any other 3rd party product doing firewalling on the interface. Another funny thing occurs when I run terminal services manager...I get a message saying "you could not be authenticated on this server"

The event log on the server looks great...no services or drivers failing, no unusual events in the DNS APP or any other log.

Does anyone have experience with this one? I've been suporting Windows servers for more than 10 years and this one has me stumped..

This is the 2nd server (DC) that this is happenning on. I've done some searches and no-one seems to have had this problem. I find that hard to believe.

Any help on this one would be appreciated.

5 replies

by wquinn

I currently have the same exact issue.

Did anybody ever find a fix for this?

Thanks,

by rnewman

I posted this question at Experts-Echange, and didnt get much of a response....was kind of dissaponted....still am....

But nontheless, here's what I found out:

This scenario appears to have happenned before, as I was able to find a few articles or newsgroup posts that alluded to it, yet didn't deal with it directly. It appears to happen on UPGRADES from 2000 to 2003 and only on domain controllers. It's happenned to me twice, and I think I used the same OS CD. The consensus on this is that there is damage to the OS, and my inability to do things like install Backup Exec on my troubled server confirms it. I get some weird SQL server error when I try to install backup exec.

The solution, in my case, is to reinstall 2003 server clean. If your server sits with other domain controllers on the same subnet, make sure you have another global catalog, and dcpromo it down. Rename it and unjoin it from the domain.

Now you can do a clean install of 2003, give it back the old server name, dcpromo it back up, and setup your dhcp, dns and everything else. Copy your data back if necessary.

In my case, my second troubled server is not on the US mainland, and I had a flight back to NJ the following morning, so I had to leave the server in it's crippled state. What IS true is that the server still does authenticate and AD appears to work ok.

My solution was to ship another 2003 server there, dcpromo it up, before I could start. Lucky for me the OS on the troubled box is on a "C" drive and all data is on "D". All I have to do now is dcpromo down the troubled box, rename, unjoin, and have my helper on the remote side pop the 2003 server cd in and reformat "C", and reinstall. As long as I can rdp into it once it's installed, I can rename it back to the old server name, and dcpromo it back up. The "D" drive, where all the data and permissions are should come right back up, because the domain is the same as it was before.

I mentioned before that I had 2 servers with this problem...the one here in NJ was decommissioned and even though the OS was 'damaged' I was still able to dcpromo it down when I got it back to the main office. So for my other server, out on some island out in the Atlantic, I am assuming dcpromo WILL execute remotely.

Hope this helps.

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