Windows Server 2003 Admin tools under Vista

Written by Sam McGeown
Published on 7/6/2007 - Read in about 3 min (554 words)

If, like me, you want to administrate your Windows 2003 servers from your Vista workstation, you may find that you recieve an “MMC could not create snap in” error when you open one of the admin tools, it also manifests as corrupted graphics within some MMC Add-ins.

It appears that the dlls are not registered correctly, there’s a KB article from Microsoft that contains a script to reregister the dlls. It’s a simple fix:

  • Copy and paste the following script into a text document, save it as RegisterAdminPack.cmd
  1. @echo off
  2.     <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <span class="co1"><font size="2" color="#808080">REM RegisterAdminPak.cmd</font></span>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <span class="co1"><font size="2" color="#808080">REM (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.</font></span>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=adprop.dll azroles.dll azroleui.dll ccfg95.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% certadm.dll certmmc.dll certpdef.dll certtmpl.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% certxds.dll cladmwiz.dll clcfgsrv.dll clnetrex.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% cluadmex.dll cluadmmc.dll cmproxy.dll cmroute.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% cmutoa.dll cnet16.dll debugex.dll dfscore.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% dfsgui.dll dhcpsnap.dll dnsmgr.dll domadmin.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% dsadmin.dll dsuiwiz.dll imadmui.dll lrwizdll.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% mprsnap.dll msclus.dll mstsmhst.dll mstsmmc.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% nntpadm.dll nntpapi.dll nntpsnap.dll ntdsbsrv.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% ntfrsapi.dll rasuser.dll rigpsnap.dll rsadmin.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% rscommon.dll rsconn.dll rsengps.dll rsjob.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% rsservps.dll rsshell.dll rssubps.dll rtrfiltr.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% schmmgmt.dll tapisnap.dll tsuserex.dll vsstskex.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% w95inf16.dll w95inf32.dll winsevnt.dll winsmon.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">set</font></span> <span class="re1">filelist</span>=%<span class="re2">filelist</span>% winsrpc.dll winssnap.dll ws03res.dll</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2">&nbsp;</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw1"><font color="#a1a100">for</font></span> %%i <span class="kw1"><font color="#a1a100">in</font></span> <span class="br0"><font color="#66cc66">(</font></span>%<span class="re2">filelist</span>%<span class="br0"><font color="#66cc66">)</font></span> <span class="kw1"><font color="#a1a100">do</font></span> <span class="br0"><font color="#66cc66">(</font></span></font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2">&nbsp;<span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">echo</font></span> Registering %%i &hellip;</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2">&nbsp;regsvr32 /s %%i</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <span class="br0"><font size="2" color="#66cc66">)</font></span>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">echo</font></span>.</font>
          </div>
        </li>
        
        <li class="li1">
          <div class="de1">
            <font size="2"><span class="kw3"><font color="#000066">Echo</font></span> Command Completed</font>
          </div>
        </li>
      </ol>
    </div>
    
  • Run a command prompt under admin privileges (Start menu > All Programs > Accessories > Right click Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”)
  • Navigate to where you saved RegisterAdminPack.cmd, and run it.

Simple as that. Some people find that the admin tool shortcuts aren’t installed under administrative tools, that didn’t happen to me, but you can either reinstall the tools or manually create the shortcuts by opening a new MMC window (Start > Run > mmc) and then adding the relevant snap-in. You can then save your console and create a shortcut wherever you desire.

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