Unable to connect to clients via Remote Assistance or Remote Desktop

Here is an overview of our network:

Server 2003 SBS in our headquarters
- DNS and WINS all go through here

Cisco PIX 506E at headquarters, Cisco PIX 501 at remote office
(192.168.1.1 at hq, 192.168.0.1 at remote)
- VPN Tunnel

Sometimes before it was hit or miss if I could connect to the computers
at our remote location, but now it's completely stopped. Not only is
it our remote location, but I can't even connect to my test computer
here at the same location as the server.

Under the Remote Assitance Group Policy, I have Offer Remote Assitance
enabled, and I list Administrators as the group allowed to connect.
Under Windows Firewall group policy, I made the proper changes for
Defining Port Exemptions and Program Exemptions as stated by the Remote
Assistance explanation menu:

However, this isn't working. I did a gpupdate /force on the client,
and that didn't help either. When I try to connect for Remote
Assitance, it says "The remote server machine does not exist or is
unavailable". When I try to connect for Remote Desktop, it says "The
Client could not connect to the remote computer. Remote Connections may
not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to accept new
connections. It is also possible that network problems are preventing
your connection."

I'm all out of ideas. Any other things I should try? It would
obviously seem as if there is some configuration issue, but I don't
know what that would be.

Thanks....

Hello Garbis,

Thank you for posting here.

According to your description, I understand that you can not connect
clients via Remote Assistance or Remote Desktop, even the client is in
local network. If I have misunderstood the problem, please don't hesitate
to let me know.

Based on my research, I suggest we try the following steps to see if we can
resolve this issue:

1. Rerun CEICW

You have to make sure your SBS 2003 server have right network
configuration. Go through the follow KB and Rerun CEICW again carefully.

How to configure Internet access in Windows Small Business Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825763/en-us

2. Please disable the firewall on the problematic client, then test this
issue.

3. Please telnet 3389 port from SBS to problematic client. If it not works,
please check your VPN configuration. May be there are some firewalls block
the connection?

4. Remote Assistance will use multiple TCP port, please check your
configuration via the following KB:

Remote Assistance cannot connect to a Windows XP SP2 client computer in SMS
Administrator console in Systems Management Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=886120

Additional, since your Site-to-Site VPN is setup by 3rd-party hardware, if
you have problem about connection via this VPN, you can connect your Cisco
vendor for further assistance.

If the issue persists, please kindly help me collect some information for
further investigation:

1. Do you install ISA on SBS server? What is the version of ISA?

2. Is this issue happens on all clients?

3. Try to access RDP from the client itself, is it fine?

4. Try to access the problematic client from other client machine, is it
fine?

5. How many NICs in your SBS server?

6. Gather netstat -ano command outcome on problematic client and let me
know the result.

Terence,

Thanks for the reply. I actually fixed this issue.

I deleted the windows firewall group permission, and then created a new
one.

I re-added all of the proper exceptions, and now I can do remote
desktop and remote assistance. I'm not sure why it stopped working,
but at least this fixed the problem.

Hello Phil,

I'm glad to hear that things are working correctly for you now. Thank you
very much for sharing out your resolution. Please do not hesitate to post
in this great newsgroup if you need any assistance in the future. I look
forward to working with you again.