h0bbel.p0ggel.org

Dear Microsoft.

You have done a lot of things right in both Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 (and Server 2008) and in Windows XP Service Pack 3. But for some reason, and I really can't understand why, you have done rather arbitrary command line parameter changes in the new Terminal Services client.

As most, of not all, Windows Server administrators I rely heavily on the remote administration capabilities of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).While Windows allows a lot of remote administration methods, some things do need more of a "hands on approach". Remotely connecting to the server console provides an excellent way to get your hands dirty, and as I live in a mostly virtualized environment it's usually the best way of managing some aspects of my servers.


In a pre Vista SP1/Server 2008 and XP SP3 environment, a simple '%windir%\System32\mstsc.exe -v:<ip> /F /console' would do the trick.

All of a sudden, notice that that the /console argument seems to have been replaced by a new /admin argument. What?! All my old shortcuts that connect me directly to the servers console no longer connect me to the console. It doesn't complain when I execute the command, but if I don't use the new /admin parameter I connect to a new session instead of an existing console session.
 


It's a small task to change my own personal shortcuts, but if you have created a set of shared shortcuts for your administrators you now need double sets. At least until you upgrade all you clients. For a set of administrators thats a small task, but it's greatly annoying. Another side effect of this is that if you have old MMC consoles still call the /console option as well, thus are not connecting to the actual console. I noticed that the Remote Admin MMC plugin in Windows Server 2008 has been updated to actually use the new /admin parameter, so at least they got that bit sorted. I haven't checked in XP or Vista yet though.

Microsoft: I can't understand why you did this change, but I can accept it. What I don't understand is this; When you change a parameter like this, didn't you think that it would be a good idea to still support the old syntax as well? At least until the next version?

I wonder how many others are out there that think they connect to their server consoles, but actually aren't. I'm certain this has caused a lot of frustration and confusion all over the place. In mixed environments this can be a real hassle, and a genuine issue. I'm sure there are are other consequences to this as well, that I haven't discovered or thought about yet.

In summary, /console has been deprecated and replaced by /admin when calling the mstsc client. Why? I have no idea, and I haven't seen anything "official" regarding this anywhere.

After the Windows Server 2003 SP2 release, I decided to give the Hotfix Scan Tool a spin, to see if it would identify any potential problems prior to testing the SP2 installation itself.

The first thing noticed was that the installation details on the download page are incorrect. The site states "Download the compressed file and double-click to activate it. It will then extract files to a directory you choose." which doesn't apply to this download. The installation routine places HotFixScanTool.vbs directly in %systemroot%\system32.

Secondly, since this is a vbscript, and it's installed in the system path, you should be able to run it by double clicking it, typing the filename in a cmd window or directly from the run command on the start menu. In my case, that didn't work and I got the following error:

Doing Start->Run->cmd.exe and typing in cscript %systemroot%\system32\HotFixScanTool.vbs did the trick though:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cscript %systemroot%\system32\HotFixScanTool.vbs
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Detecting if any updates in the Block installation list were 
installed on the system...

No updates in the block installation list were detected.
You can proceed to install Windows Server 2003 SP2

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

So far, so good but if this is an indication of the quality level of the rest of SP2 I'm somewhat worried.

All of a sudden, Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 is available for download. Check the Microsoft site for more details regarding what patches are included in SP2.

Microsoft has also made a Hotfix Scan Tool available than scans for hotfixes that will potentially regress after the installation. Be sure to run that to make sure everything applies properly. The tool can be run before SP2 deployment as well as after.

KB931940 should have more details about the tool (vbscript) but that seems to be unavailable at the time of writing.

Happy patching and updating.

Update 1: If you run, or plan to run, Windows Server 2003 R2 be sure to upgrade to R2 before applying Service Pack 2. If you don’t, you will not be able to uninstall SP2 after the R2 installation.

Update 2: Apparently you need to uninstall IE7 before installing SP2, as SP2 installs IE6. I have not verified this though.