Connectivity issues with Server 2003 and Vista Ultimate

First off - I am VERY new to server 2003 and networking in general, so bare with me.

I have a single domain with a single workstation setup at home to learn Server 2003. I am working with Server 2003 Enterprise and Vista Ultimate.

I am not able to connect remotely to the server, and my workstation is not getting an internet connection from the server.

Sometimes, after I hit connect on the Remote Desktop Connection program, the screen turns all black. Recently it has told me that it cannot find the server.

Both IP's are static, and here is the info:

Workstation:
192.168.1.69
255.255.255.0
192.168.1.1

Primary DNS: 192.168.1.50

Server:
192.168.1.50
255.255.255.0
192.168.1.1

Primary DNS: 127.0.0.1

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Comments

MattGibson

Alright my DC's IP is currently this and I cannot get internet

IP Address - 192.168.1.50
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway - 192.168.1.1

Primary DNS - 192.168.1.50
Secondary DNS - <blank>

Also no internet when the Primary DNS is set to 127.0.0.1

undomiel

Please clarify on the no internet. Does this mean that when you ping google.com you get nothing AND when you ping 4.2.2.2 you get nothing?

MattGibson

undomiel wrote: »

Please clarify on the no internet. Does this mean that when you ping google.com you get nothing AND when you ping 4.2.2.2 you get nothing?

Ok i may be revealing here how much of a newbie I'm being. I was referring to trying to connect to google.com via IE and not getting anything.

However when i went to run --> cmd and typed: ping -a google.com

I received all 4 packets

I also typed ping -a 4.2.2.2 and got the same results

undomiel

Not a problem! Everyone has started from the base boards before. As long as you're learning and building upon that. So we're getting pings out to the internet but IE can not pull up anything. Is this the same on both server and workstation, they can ping by ip and by name but can not pull up anything by IE?

MattGibson

undomiel wrote: »

Not a problem! Everyone has started from the base boards before. As long as you're learning and building upon that. So we're getting pings out to the internet but IE can not pull up anything. Is this the same on both server and workstation, they can ping by ip and by name but can not pull up anything by IE?

The server can ping out but nothing shows up on IE.

I have not tested these settings on the workstation.

Since I have been so jumbled in my information, here is everything that I can think of that is of any importance:

PRIOR TO THE PROBLEMS

Prior to anything being wrong, I would sign in on my workstation as USERNAME@homeserver.local in which USERNAME is an admin on AD.

Remote desktop worked with no issues.

Internet worked fine on the workstation.

I had two users - testuser@homeserver.local (this user was used to see how group policies affected the user, etc.) and then matt@homeserver.local which was my main login name. It is in both admin groups, the workstation and the server.

WHEN S*** HIT THE FAN

I was trying to add a printer to the server. It was attached via a USB port. During the setup, I set the printers IP to the server IP (192.168.1.50). After I got past that part, I had to install drivers. The drivers weren't there by default, so I put them on a flash drive.

I put the flash drive in the front jacks of the server, as opposed to the ones near the monitor hookup. Somewhere around that time, the server froze.

While it was froze, on the workstation, both users were logged in.

I unplugged the flash drive physically (without doing safe remove since the OS was frozen) and unplugged the printer (since the wizard hadn't finished).

I did a hard restart (by holding in the power button) on the server.

When it rebooted, no usb devices work anymore, and then I started experiencing problems with the Remote Desktop.

When the server loads up, in the bottom right hand corner, it says that it is not recognizing USB and asks me to click there (which proves difficult without a mouse).

Thus far, I have been navigating around the server OS with a keyboard.

undomiel

Thanks for the summary! It helps to have all that information in one place. Try booting into safe mode and removing all of the usb transport devices in the device manager. Restart back into normal mode and it should reinstall the devices automatically. See if that clears up the usb problem. The remote desktop feels like a separate issue though. Have you implemented any group policies recently?

MattGibson

Ok, I'll give that a shot, although I am at school today until 6:00pm EST so I won't be able to try that until later.

As far as group policies go I did the following:

To try to learn NTFS permissions, I setup two folders on the C: drive, Test Folder A and Test Folder B

With my testuser@homeserver.local, I made a group called Test Group. I then set different permissions for the folders, folders within them, and files within them to see how they were affected.

During the server restarting, I restarted my regular desktop as well while both users were logged on. The only prompt I got was something along the lines of "any unsaved data will be lost".

Other than that, I may have screwed up a policy without knowing it but then again I can't be sure.

Is there a way to reset all of the policies back to defaults?

MattGibson

Any further ideas of how to handle the remote desktop problem?

MattGibson

undomiel wrote: »

Thanks for the summary! It helps to have all that information in one place. Try booting into safe mode and removing all of the usb transport devices in the device manager. Restart back into normal mode and it should reinstall the devices automatically. See if that clears up the usb problem. The remote desktop feels like a separate issue though. Have you implemented any group policies recently?

OMFG IT WORKS

That fixed everything!!!!

I'm officially going to support these boards. That was badass.

Thank you everyone for all of your help!

undomiel

You're welcome! Glad we could be of help.

Just to clarify though, did that fix the usb problem AND the remote desktop/network problem or just the usb problem?

MattGibson

undomiel wrote: »

You're welcome! Glad we could be of help. Just to clarify though, did that fix the usb problem AND the remote desktop/network problem or just the usb problem?

LOL, it fixed both!

However, thanks to this problem I learned:

How to ping stuff
Event Viewer
DNS Forwarding

dynamik

You learn the most when things go wrong

undomiel

And I learned that a corrupted usb driver can break remote desktop! I never would've suspected that.

MattGibson

Yea apparently corrupted hardware can cause all sorts of issues with remote desktop.