Posts tagged ‘registry’

Disable WSUS on Managed Computers

The past 8 or more years most of us have managed PC updates using WSUS (Windows Server Update Service) and Group policy.  However, the structure of the modern office has changed to a large percentage of mobile employees who never ‘touch down’ at headquarters.   If these devices do not connect to the domain they do not have updates applied.

A client who has not returned to the office in 18 months, and likely will not for the life of their laptop, recently asked how they could update their machine manually.  Currently they were not able to do so as Windows Update showed “settings are managed by your system administrator”, in other words, by WSUS

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It is quite simple to disable WSUS management in the registry, however remember if the device is reconnected to the domain, the WSUS policies will be reapplied.  Therefore you may want to move the device to an OU not linked to the WSUS policy or remove the device in the policy under security filtering.

Disclaimer:  Be aware making incorrect registry changes can have disastrous effects to the health of the device.  Be sure to backup the registry before editing.  To do so see the following Microsoft article; “How to back up and restore the registry in Windows”  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756 

  • Open the registry editor, by entering Regedit in the Start / Run box, and browse to:  HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
  • Locate the WindowsUpdate  Key and delete it
  • Reboot the PC (may take 2 reboots)
  • Now you can manually update and configure Windows updates to automatically check for and install updates directly from the Microsoft Update site

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You may want to consider using a newer service such as Windows Intune to manage your computers, especially mobile devices.  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-intune/

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Category:

Active Directory, Registry, SBS 2008, SBS 2011, Server 2012, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized, Windows 7, Windows 8

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Add a Terminal Server to the SBS 2011 RWA page

With SBS 2008 if you wanted a Terminal Server to be listed with the computers to which a user could select on the RWW (Remote Web Workplace) page, you had to add a registry entry. With SBS 2011 adding the Terminal server (now called RDS or Remote Desktop Services Server) to the new RWA (Remote Web Access) page is pretty much the same only the key in which you create the entry doesn’t exist, so it is now a two step process.

Note: This will not work on Server 2012 Essentials, and because it and SBS 2011 Essentials communicate with the same “connector”, I suspect it will not work on it either.  The change is intended for SBS 2011 Standard, or edit the existing key on SBS 2008 Standard or Premium.

Update:  Should you be looking for information regarding adding a 2012 RDS Server (Remote Desktop Server / Terminal Server)  to an SBS 2008/2011 domain, please see the following more recent post: https://blog.lan-tech.ca/2013/04/11/add-2012-rds-server-to-sbs-20082011/

The normal warnings apply: making changes to the registry can negatively impact your server or even make it unusable. Before making changes to the registry, back it up and if not familiar with making registry changes it might be best not to proceed.

Open the registry editor, as a domain admin, and locate the following key:

        HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer

  1. Add a new key named RemoteUserPortal
  2. Within that key create a new Multi-String Value entry named TsServerNames Then edit the new entry and insert as a value, the exact name of your Terminal (RDS) server. If you have multiple RDS servers add them each in a separate line of the value/data area.

Category:

SBS, SBS 2011, TS/RDS, Uncategorized

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