Category Archives: Windows SBS

Windows Update | Restart Prompt

“RESTART YOUR COMPUTER TO FINISH INSTALLING IMPORTANT UPDATES”

My life would be so much simpler if this prompt didn’t keep showing.

Yes we know Windows has updated…
Yes we know if needs a reboot…
No we can’t do it in the middle of the day… So don’t ask me again in 4hours time or infact ever (until I have rebooted), especially when it’s on a TS / RDS with multiple domain users connecting.

Although I do enjoy (sarcasm) having another email whinging about why the server is prompting for a reboot, when in fact, the update has already been applied. (Yes I do understand this is there for a reason, but sometimes it just isn’t practical to restart servers every-time, every-day of the week, this is what a reboot schedule is for!)
OK. RANT OVER…
I’m not sure why you can’t fully disable this, Microsoft’s way of ensuring you do actually reboot, however there are a few workarounds I’ve listed to help rid of that pesky message.

Temporary Method using CMD:

sc stop wuauserv

GPO Method (gpedit.msc):

Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / and disable Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.

Regedit:

This will allow you to set the 1440min “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” to more that 1440min.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708449%28WS.10%29.aspx

“The RPC server is unavailable” when joining to domain

Everytime you try to connect to the domain (from workgroup) it would say “The RPC server is unavailable”

First thoughts directly point to DNS… which was some of the problem. The Router was dishing out DHCP rather than Windows Server 2003 SBS.

Why?? I asked?? Was there any advantage of this? not really… If this is setup within a small company then people will be server based users anyway so probably unable to operate without it, even if the web/DHCP was available on the router.

The client tries to resolve the internal domain.local using the router on the external DNS. That’s not going to work! not unless you bodge it and manually add the SBS Servers DNS into the DHCP the router dishes out so the clients can resolve it. Not the best fix, but it works.

Better still add DHCP on the SBS2003!

Getting this one fixed I could now do the following:

  1. Ping the server
  2. Ping the FQDN of the server (fixed the issue in the first link)

But I was still experiencing the annoying “The RPC server is unavailable” why was this??

Finally finding the problem!! “NORTON INTERNET SECURITY” those three words made into a dirty acronym “NIS”

Disabling the firewall and BAMM! The client could be connected to the domain and fully working.

 

 

WSUS (wuauclt.exe) | Updates CLI

Detectnow Option

Because waiting for detection to start can be a time-consuming process, an option has been added to allow you to initiate detection right away. On one of the computers with the new Automatic Update client installed, run this at command prompt:

wuauclt.exe /detectnow

Resetauthorization Option

WSUS uses a cookie on client computers to store various types of information, including computer group membership when client-side targeting is used. By default this cookie expires an hour after WSUS creates it. If you are using client-side targeting and change
group membership, use this option in combination with detectnow to expire the cookie, initiate detection, and have WSUS update computer group membership.

Note that when combining parameters, you can use them only in the order specified as follows:

wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) Support Tools:

CLI for WUAUCLT:

Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708617(WS.10).aspx

“This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer”

OK, this option is simple to deal with:

  1. Right click the file
  2. Select “Unblock”
  3. Run the Application (*.exe)

If you don’t want this option to keep coming up just change the following Group Policy setting:

  1. gpedit.msc
  2. User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Attachment Manager
  3. Enable: Do not preserve zone information in file attachments