Redesigned Website

We've completed the initial phase of our website redesign!

In the next few days, we'll be editing all of our old pages with redirects to the equivalent page at the new website. Some of the pages already redirect property and a few of them (like the main home page) automatically do so after a second or two.

We want to keep the old site in place for a while to let the search engines catch up with the move. After about a week, we'll move all of the old pages into an archived subset of our new website for historical purposes only.

We've painstakingly recreated every page on the old site in the new design so that all of your important information is still there in the new one. The first advantage of the new site is the great site-wide search function.

The move was done for a couple of reasons. First, our old site was looking pretty aged. It was created by hand in static HTML. It has been tiresome to edit and keep up to date because of this. I think that the design looked OK but it was based upon Windows XP - which contributed to the "yesterdays web" look.

So, we moved to a CMS based upon Joomla 1.5. It was a significant learning curve but I was able to draw upon the knowledge of people smarter than me to get me on the right path. I am immensely greatful for everyone who has helped me switch paradigms into the world of Joomla.

Now that the initial change-over phase has been completed, we can start looking for ways to make the website more interactive and social. I'm very excited about the possibilities. There are so many smart and talented people using VNCScan in ways that I never imagined. You guys deserve a website that can let you share that knowledge and help each other out.

Any comments on the new website will help steer it's direction.

Podcamp Support and Social Networking

Bozteck is a proud sponsor of

I believe in the power of social networks, blogging, and podcasting to bring people together like never before in human existence. It's an exciting new world that we live in today and I feel like we are on the verge of something as revolutionary as the invention of the telephone.

The world is getting smaller and information is becoming more accessible than ever imagined before. And it's becoming accessible to people all across the globe instantly.

Social media and networking is the tipping point that allows the Internet to not only offer information to it's users, but also allows the information to flow in both directions.

On June 28, 2008, I will be in attendance at the Podcamp Ohio Un-conference and will be giving away four full site licenses for our VNCScan Enterprise Network Manager.

If you're attending this event, look me up. I'd love to chat!

Steve Bostedor
Bozteck President

Error: Multiple connections to a server or shared ... are not allowed.

You may get an error stating: "Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed" when deploying VNC to remote computers or running scripts remotely.

Information

This error goes way back to the early days of Windows networking and it's shameful that Microsoft hasn't corrected it, yet. A Windows computer can connect to a network resource such as a remote share only once with a single set of credentials.

For example, if I log onto the domain as bozteck\steveb and map a drive to \\server1\share1 using that account, I can not later issue a command to connect to \\server1\share2 supplying alternate user credentials in the command line. My computer can only authenticate me against \\server1 once. If I try, I will get the error above.

The Work Around

There's a simple way to trick Windows into thinking that \\server1 is a completely different machine, allowing you to authenticate against it a second time. If the IP address for \\server1 is 10.1.1.1, you simply reference it by that IP address of \\10.1.1.1\share2 and pass it the set of credentials required to connect. Windows treats \\server1 and \\10.1.1.1 as completely different machines!

You can do this in VNCScan in a few locations depending on the scope that you wish to apply. Most people just do it globally in the main program preferences.

There's an option there labeled, "Use IP address instead of HostName". Checking this box will allow you to get around this error. There is a similarly worded checkbox in both the group properties and computer properties.

Maybe some day Microsoft will widen up this limitation but until then, this should get you by.

Disabling Firewalls for Management

I've had a lot of requests for a way to disable XP firewalls on the network or at least open up the required ports to remotely manage the computers. If your workstations are protected by a NAT translating router with a decent firewall built into it, there is typically little need for the XP desktop firewall to be running on them.

If you have the XP firewall enabled, there's very little that you can do in the way of remote management for these PC's. Fortunately, there are was to automate the configuration of the XP firewalls on your network depending on what type of a network you are using.

Login Script Method

The easiest way to do this is with a login script. If your company is using a directory services such as Novel or Active Directory, you can create a script that runs each time that a user logs in. You can use this script to open the required firewall ports.

We run into a problem, however, if the user that is logging in does not have local administrative rights on his PC. This is required to modify the settings. For this, we can employ a nice piece of freeware called CPAU. Using this tool, you can do a run-as style command to make it go. Alternatively, you can use a tool such as Admin Script Editor to compile your script into an executable that runs under a specific security account. There are other tools that can do this and feel free to add them in the comments section if you would.

Active Directory Startup Script Method

You can also run the script using Active Directory's group policy for the machine account. This script runs under the context of the machine's system account and does not need to be elevated by tools such as CPAU. You can do this in the Group Policy Editor under "Windows Settings => Scripts => Startup".

The following is a script that will open the required ports on the XP firewall:

netsh firewall set portopening udp 445 WindowsNetworking enable all
netsh firewall set portopening tcp 139 WindowsNetworking enable all
netsh firewall set portopening udp 137 WindowsNetworking enable all
netsh firewall set portopening udp 138 WindowsNetworking enable all
netsh firewall set portopening tcp 5900 VNC enable all
netsh firewall set portopening tcp 5800 VNC-HTTP enable all

Group Policy Method

You can set these options using Active Directory's Group Policy, also. You can access this in the Group Policy Editor by navigating to "Computer Configuration => Administrative Templates => Network => Network Connections => Windows Firewall".

Extra Notes

As a side note, if you choose to use a scripting tool such as Admin Script Editor to compile your script, you can also choose to distribute it directly to the end users so that they can execute it themselves.

Make sure that you also disable Simple File Sharing on the remote computers. That can be just as much of a barrier to remote administration as the firewall. I'll make a post about that one soon.

Demo: Installing UltraVNC to Vista

You can download this tool here!

VNC in Vista - Finally!

The current release of VNCScan has a working beta method of deploying UltraVNC version 1.0.4 to Vista computers! We are the first to market with this feature!

While 90% of it has been fully tested and working, there are still some minor missing pieces that you may run into. We don't know what they are so we're relying upon you to let us know what you find.

Here's a quick run-though for deploying UltraVNC to Vista in the upcoming version 2008.6.1:

1. Launch the deployment wizard as usual
2. Create a new profile and select "Ultra104" as the version
3. Set a VNC password (even if you're going to use MS Auth)
4. Blow through the rest of the wizard answering questions as you see fit.
5. Watch the deployment process - some errors in the script are normal but others can mean things went badly.

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You will want to make sure that Network Discovery and File Sharing has been turned on for your Vista computers. A firewall and stopped services can keep the good guys out as well as the bad guys.

If things didn't work, please post the output of the script here, editing out anything that you feel that you can not freely share on a forum post.

Bug fix release coming soon

I apologize for the length of time between release lately. There have been a few pesky bugs that I've been working on that I want to make complete sure that they are fixed before releasing the next version.

There are so many cool features in the program already that I'm having trouble finding new things to add without turning VENM into bloat ware. If you have ideas, please let me know. I love adding things that make life easier on overworked Network Admins. Even the smallest addition or tweak could make a big difference.

Another contributor to the length of time between updates is the work on the Vista compatible push mechanism. The guys at UltraVNC have been working hard on a stable Vista compatible release of VNC and I've been working with them to work out the best way to deploy it remotely.

The changes that Microsoft has made to Vista have made it very difficult to remotely manage the operating system with third party tools like we did in XP. It doesn't help that the guys at UltraVNC decided to pick now to make a change from using the Windows registry to store VNC configuration data to using INI files. Typically, I'd welcome the change but things are already tuff to adapt to with Vista. This adds even more of a barrier that we need to overcome.

For now, you can download the standard UltraVNC server 1.0.4 beta from their website and install it manually on a Vista computer. If you do this, you can remote control it using VENM with no problems. I've even created a silent install for our customers that you can download here.

So, anyways, I plan to release the bug fix release with a couple of new features on April 2nd. It would probably be available on the 1st but I don't want people thinking it's an April Fools joke because it has been so long. ;)

Comments are welcome.