Infuriating Windows Server 2003 SP2 behaviour

Published 01 November 07 11:44 PM | alexcampbell

<rant> 

I just added two new servers to our hosting AD domain via Remote Desktop.  After rebooting, I could no longer Remote Desktop to or even ping the machines.

So I get in a taxi, go in to the datacenter, log in to the machines locally, and discover that Windows has decided to enable its firewall (and block all remote connections).

This new 'feature' just wasted nearly 2 hours of my day.  And for what?  I am all for 'secure by default' but this is taking it way too far.

</rant>

Comments

# mark said on November 2, 2007 05:13 AM:

This was really well documented in the changes in sp2 so you could had known it before you upgraded...

# alexcampbell said on November 2, 2007 05:36 AM:

Does documenting a stupid feature really well make it any less stupid?

# jayson knight said on November 2, 2007 09:45 AM:

Given that this is a domain, you really should have windows firewall disabled via GP, unless you just really like having extraneous windows services running in the bg ;-).

# foobar said on November 2, 2007 12:12 PM:

An easier way to circumvent this is to log on to one of your available servers and use the Services MMC to remotely disable the firewall service.