We’ve had a lot of request for the ability to automatically reconnect to computers when they are rebooted.  A majority of the requests were resolved with the implementation of the background scanner and the actions that can be performed when the scanner detects that the computer is alive.

To take this a step further, we’ve modified the ping window that happens when you right-click a computer and choose “Ping Computer”.  Instead of just opening a command window with the standard ping command running, we’ve designed our own.  We’ve done this in order to bring you an exciting new feature – automatically running commands or connecting when a computer responds for X number of consecutive pings.

Here’s a quick video showing how: http://screencast.com/t/CqJI7YhE

Download the latest version here!

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McAfee Antivirus is falsely detecting VNC remote control software as a malware and deleting it upon detection. This is causing a major problem for a lot of remote management tools that rely upon this popular open source software to operate.

If you are using McAfee on your network, you can use the following detection log as a checklist of files that need to be added to your “exclusion list” inside your antivirus properties.

You may also want to look into your McAfee settings for ways to change the default action from DELETE to LOG. We’ve notified McAfee of this problem and are awaiting a response. If this problem is affecting you, please contact them at vendor_questions@mcafee.com.

9/19/2008 11:30:01 AM Scan Started BMSANWS4LZ13D1\SYSTEM (managed) VirusScan 8.5 on demand friday scan
9/19/2008 11:36:51 AM Deleted SYSTEM C:\FASTPUSH\VNC7\REALVNC4\LOGMESSAGES.DLL RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:51 AM Deleted SYSTEM c:\fastpush\vnc7\realvnc4\logmessages.dll RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM C:\FASTPUSH\VNC7\REALVNC4\VNCCONFIG.EXE RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM c:\fastpush\vnc7\realvnc4\vncconfig.exe RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM C:\FASTPUSH\VNC7\REALVNC4\WINVNC4.EXE RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM c:\fastpush\vnc7\realvnc4\winvnc4.exe RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM C:\FASTPUSH\VNC7\REALVNC4\WM_HOOKS.DLL RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:52 AM Deleted SYSTEM c:\fastpush\vnc7\realvnc4\wm_hooks.dll RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:53 AM Deleted SYSTEM C:\FASTPUSH\VNC7\ULTRA\WINVNC.EXE RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)
9/19/2008 11:36:53 AM Deleted SYSTEM c:\fastpush\vnc7\ultra\winvnc.exe RemAdm-VNCView(Remote Admin Tool)

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We’ve had a few reports of the error:

Error writing to “C:\users\[username]\appdata\roaming\bozteck\vncscan console.net\2008.8.6.231\vncscan.cmd

This error occurrs when the beyondexecv2.exe is missing from the program folder. The quick way to fix this is to do an add/remove of vncscan and then run the setup again.

The manual fix for this is to copy the beyondexecv2.exe file from c:\fastpush\vnc7\utils folder into the “C:\Program Files\Bozteck\VNCScan Console .NET” folder.

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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.

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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.

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The above error was being thrown for some users when scanning for VNC in certain groups. This was happening due to a bug in the module that checked to see who was logged into the remote computer.

This has been fixed and a new release had been placed at http://www.vncscan.com/vs/download.htm

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