The administrative tools in Windows Server 2003 SP1 are a set of Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins that you can use to administer users, computers, services, and other system components on local and remote computers.

If Windows Firewall is enabled on a computer, these snap-ins use two system-generated dialog boxes for management: Select Users, Computers, Or Groups and Find Users, Contacts, And Groups. These dialog boxes are commonly used to perform tasks such as the following:

Find Users, Contacts, And Groups is used for tasks such as the following:

Both dialog boxes are used to find and select objects such as users, computers, printers, and other security principals from the local computer or Active Directory. Although other applications can use these dialog boxes, we’ll discuss only the changes that affect the administrative tools that are listed below.

For the administrative tools that are listed below to connect to a remote computer, that remote computer must allow incoming network traffic on TCP port 445. However, if Windows Firewall is enabled, it might block incoming network traffic on TCP port 445 and you might therefore receive one or more of the following error messages:

These errors can occur when one of the following MMC snap-ins is used for remote administration:

To use these tools to remotely connect a computer with Windows Firewall enabled, you must open TCP port 445 in the firewall on the remote computer. To do this, complete the following steps:

Caution

Open firewall ports can be a security vulnerability. You should carefully plan and test any such configuration change before implementing it.