Catapult Systems Recognized as 2012 Microsoft Systems Management Partner of the Year

Pretty cool – Catapult Systems Recognized as 2012 Microsoft Systems Management Partner of the Year.  I’m honored to be part of such a great team of folks at Catapult!

Console connection error 0x800706BA

Ran into a situation with a remote CM12 console being unable to connect to a site server.  According to the local SMSAdminUI.log file:

Transport error; failed to connect, message: 
'The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA) 
'\r\n Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.SmsConnectionException 
\r\n The RPC server is unavailable. 
(Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)\r\n  at 
Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.WqlQueryEngine.WqlQueryProcessor.ExecuteQuery
(String query, Int32 blockSize, Dictionary`2 contextInformation)

Initial troubleshooting  indicated that this was a problem with the Windows Firewall blocking remote administration.  However, the firewall was off one the site server.  Yet some posts indicated that the ports needed to be allowed, regardless of the firewall being on/off.  So I opened up those, but it still couldn’t connect.

I took a step back and went to the basics – could I ping the FQDN?  No, I couldn’t!  Yahtzee!  I could ping the short name just fine, so I just needed to have Windows map the IP to the FQDN.  So as a quick fix, I just added an entry into the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\Hosts file – and voila, the remote CM12 console could now connect!

VBScript to delete Novell registry keys

Recently I created a script for a colleague that will recursively delete some Novell registry keys if found in HKEY_USERS.  It doesn’t check if the key exists first, it’ll just try to delete it.  However, if the key does exist and does have subkeys, it will delete the subkeys first. Hopefully this will get the job done if you need something like this.  To test it first, simply uncomment the wscript.echo statements and run on a test system.

'On Error Resume Next 
Const HKU = &H80000003 
Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:StdRegProv") 
' Delete first key strKeyPath = "Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Novell GroupWise" objRegistry.EnumKey HKU, "", arrSubkeys1 
For Each strSubkey in arrSubkeys1 'wscript.echo cstr(strSubkey) DeleteSubkeys HKU, cstr(strSubkey) & "\" & strKeypath  Next 
' Delete second key strKeyPath = "Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Novell Default Settings" objRegistry.EnumKey HKU, "", arrSubkeys2 
For Each strSubkey in arrSubkeys2 'wscript.echo cstr(strSubkey) DeleteSubkeys HKU, cstr(strSubkey) & "\" & strKeypath  Next 
wscript.quit 0 
'============================================================ 
Sub DeleteSubkeys(HKU, strKeyPath) 
   objRegistry.EnumKey HKU, strKeyPath, arrSubkeys3 
   If IsArray(arrSubkeys3) Then For Each strSubkey In arrSubkeys3 DeleteSubkeys HKU, strKeyPath & "\" & strSubkey  Next End If 
   objRegistry.DeleteKey HKU, strKeyPath z  'wscript.echo "Deleted: " & strKeyPath 
End Sub