The-IT-Blog

Here’s a simple guide on how to enable a client of SBS 2011 (this may be applicable to SBS 2008) to gain access to their PC. As usually when users try to remote onto their PC using this SBS Remote Access site it will fail due to a certificate failure, this guide will show you how to resolve this.

Note: this guide is on the premise that you do not use a third party certificate and only a generated one locally on the SBS.

Recommended to be used with IE8 and above

To Start you need to go to your external host name for the server (NOT THE IP EXTERNAL IP), in this case it is (see below)

http://remote.domain-name.co.uk

You will be greeted with this page (above) and you will want to proceed by clicking the “Continue to this website (not recommended)” and then you will have the logon page below;

Now login as you would usually if you were to log into your works pc. you will get a screen offering you shared documents, personal documents and computers.

Now you can gain access to any shared document you wish, download edit and upload a new document (applicable to the admin policy’s set), along side checking email remotely and logging into SharePoint. Finally you can connect to the PC your an administrator of.

However if this is the first time you’ve been on this dashboard you will need to have the certificates installed to gain access.

To do this, in shared folders (see below for something similar) click on “Public”

Then go to “Downloads” highlighted on the right and click it.

Now download the “Install Certificate Package.zip” to your desktop.

Now right click and click “extract all”, you will get this screen below

and click extract.

You will get these items in the next window.

Run the “InstallCertificate.exe” and select “Install the certificate on my computer”

Click Install, note you might be prompted by UAC to confirm the installation. Click “Yes”.

You will then get a confirmation window (as shown below)

Now close your browser and open it again and redirect yourself to the remote website and login. Select the machine that you want to connect to and click “connect”

you will then be presented with a possible active-x request at the bottom or top of the browser (dependant on your version of IE). Click “Allow” for all sites.

Note:Click the Icon again if nothing has happened (if you’ve been badgered by active x)

Now you will get a screen like below click “connect”

you will then be prompted for your password, enter these and click ok. next you will receive a screen confirming the certificate, check the tick box at the bottom of this window (shown below) and click “Yes”

And now you should be successfully connected to your desktop.

For more information please see the Microsoft blog on this here as well as a much smaller guide from andrewstechnology , here.