evening fellow admins, i have a server just for education running windows 2003 server, its pretty well bare besides the critical updates from microsoft, i have nearly every type of extras that come with the installation CD, well the ones i thought would come in handy, now im not in school or anything, im pretty well learing all this on my own, my questions is, how would i go abouts restarting this server completly remotely without having to be physically at the server to enter the password to sign in? im curently using the Admin account for the initial setup till i learn more on accounts but i do have another 2 accounts setup for terminal services and whatnot, Administrator is also the default name that appears on the logon screen, also just to let you know, i already disabled the "press CTRL+ALT+DEL to continue" screen cause i belive this is a step to remotely rebooting.
hey guys, thank you for paying attention to this and also i hope my question may help others too cause i belive this may be something everyone running windows server 2003 would like to be aware of... have a good one guys.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do? You can reboot a server through the terminal service and if you would prefer to access the server without using the terminal service client you could activate the web interface for the terminal service - that would make it possible to login and reboot the server as long as you have access to a webbrowser.

Hello,

If enabled, on the server, you can then use either Terminal Services or RDP to accomplish this.

Hope this helps!

yes you are right, terminal services will do this, but it will not log the machine back in after reboot, i have my terminal services running i tried rebooting but when i check to see if it will relog itself back in, it stays right at the login screen and i have to manually type the password in.. any other ideas? perhaps editing some ini file or something so windows boots up with it? im really not sure

Why do you need it to log back in on the console? You can use VNC.

If you want the machine to log in (at the console) you can set the autoadminlogin in the registry, or go to start>run> and type:
'control userpasswords2' hit enter.
It will bring up the users and passwords applet. Uncheck the box that says 'Users must enter a username and password to use this computer'

It will prompt you to enter the administrator credentials.

This will enable the console to log in automagically.

I know of no way to get a TS session to login automatically.

Why would you want a server to log in unattended ? This surely must be a security risk ?

With Windows (up to 2000, not sure about 2003), you can add your login details to the registry to have an autologin capability on the console as long as you don't have any text for the legal text box popup prior to logon. You'll need to check the Microsoft Technet site to find the relevant articles. I'd not suggest that you do this for a server though.

I don't believe that you can reconnect an TS session though.

Why do you need it to login after a restart anyway?

cause the server is on the other side of town, when i do a software upgrade or just being windows itself i need to reboot when i have to, i need it to log in automatically after reboot, but terminal services still must have a password, i will give this a shot, thanx for everyones responses, (brilliant minds at work here) happy holidays gents...

remote admin?..:D

If security is not an issue for you, try some shareware like ShoutDown+ that has the auto-login after Restart option for Windows 2000 server. And most likely ( 90%), it might work for 2003.

Any services you have running that need to be started from the console by the administrator should probably be re-configured to run with the local system account. The server will still be functional (ie: IIS, mail, ...etc...) will run with no user logged on to the box.

I can't really see a situation where a user must be logged in to the server to have it operational, regardless of reboots, upgrades, etc.

yes I'm still not following why you need to leave the machine logged in, unless you have some special software that doesnt run as a service running.

Most services are running even when the machine is at a login screen, you dont need to login to it to make web, ftp services etc. keep running. You can set it up to autologin as mentioned above, however it presents a physical security risk, as anyone in front of the keyboard is logged in (may not be an issue to you).

Actually I can see the problem - we have the same issue with our anti-virus updater: It cannot run as a service and doesn't work unless there is a user logged in. It's a pain in the behind and one of the reasons we're looking for another AV-solution on our mailserver.

Doing auto-login may not be that dangerous: Activate the screensaver and password protect it. Set the limit to one minute or so and you have reduced the risk significantly.

ok heres what i got, two security server's, one of them is still running windows XP with a capture card designed for 4 camera inputs, its connection to the internet is Buisness DSL thought a router, it dosent seem to be having any major problems, but we also use this computer daily for other things, now the next computer is windows 2003 server, 4 input security camera but has dial up, dial up is slow yes i know but the buisness will not upgrade till i get bugs fixed up, now the computer will not dial up to the internet unless i log in thus the reason why i need to have it automatically log in after a restart, now having the server reboot is down pat, but having it load up and dial up on its own after a remote restart is my problem, now rather i can get the server to load all processes including reconnecting to the internet via dial up before loging in, or i have it automatically login when its boots up... hope this clears some things up a little, sorry i didnt explain this better before hand, and i also apologize about my spelling... and thank you everyone for your replys and great advice. i knew i came to the right place...

There are several ways to do this.
If you have a control panel that offers reboot. Or a network card that has remote reboot features.

You could also use a apc reboot appliance for a power reboot.....now as far as autologin.

REGEDIT


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]


"AutoAdminLogon"="1"

Reseller-Center, that registry edit will do what exactally, how do all you guys reboot your server once you do an upgrade or something like that, do you have some way to tell different processes load before login? can i have a dial up connection and everything else to load before login? if i can then perhaps that would be my best route? anyone know if 2003 has a mmc or something so i can set the computer to load ALL processes before logon? thank you for all the reply's guys, im confident we will get somewhere here... i have AutoRestartShell in that area of my registry but not "AutoAdminLogon"...

anybody know what i trying to do here?