Remote Desktop Server – Registry Key to Change RDP Listening Port

As you probably already know, by default, Microsoft Remote Desktop listens on port 3389. This is all good, but what if you are behind a firewall and wanted to allow port forwarding to be able to access multiple computers via RDP remotely but can’t because they are all running on the same port?

Well, if you’re crafty and have a decent Linux-based router like Mikrotik that will let you create packet mangling rules to change the destination port number, you can get around this, but in environments where you have little SOHO routers like Linksys or Belkin, typically this is where changing the port number that RDP listens on comes in handy. The only problem then is remembering whatever port you changed it to because then you have to specify it anytime you connect via RDP which can be a pain if you’ve got a bad memory. There are already a thousand and one articles out there to help you change the port number, this is a quick post for future reference for myself.
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Windows Terminal Server – Three Ways to Disable AVG Tray Icon via Group Policy

I scoured the internet forever and a day to find a way to disable the AVG tray icon in a Windows Terminal Server environment because as with most people, even though to make any major changes in the AVG settings it does require an admin password, I didn’t want my users to be able to toy around in there even, let alone run a bunch of malicious scans and slow the server down for everybody or gain access to view our AVG Business license key. I even contacted AVG technical support and they didn’t have a solution to my problem and I find it extremely hard to believe that I am the only person out there in the world facing this issue.

Well, today I finally figured out a way to disable the AVG tray icon via Group Policy using Software Restriction Policies. By creating a rule to prevent the running of the “avgui.exe” process, you can essentially disable the tray icon. As long as you have your group policies structured so that your users OU get a different group policy than say the admins OU, then the admins can still get into AVG, run any scans, or change any settings inside AVG. I guess I should mention that you could use this for any OU for that matter that you didn’t want to have access to the AVG UI, it’s not just limited to Remote Desktop Servers. Pretty sweet!
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