Navigating the DTC Maze

During the process of setting up DTC you usually find yourself working with DTCPING. While invaluable in the configuration process, using it can be a time consuming process. When you run through the tool it progressively provides you with a problems that need fixing.

One such error is that only happens when working with Windows Client Operating Systems is

Invoking RPC method on YOUR-MACHINE-NAME Problem:fail to invoke remote RPC method Error(0x5) at dtcping.cpp @303 -->;RPC pinging exception -->5(Access is denied.)

RPC is turned off for Remote Clients by default in Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as a security measure.

The fix for this is to add a key into the registry.

More details on the change to RPC and the need for RestrictRemoteClients Registry settings.

Below is a bit of PowerShell code that will add/fix the setting in the registry as per the documentation.

$rpcPath = 'HKLM:Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\RPC'

$remoteKey = 'RestrictRemoteClients'

$rpc = Test-Path $rpcPath

md $rpcPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Remove-ItemProperty $rpcPath $remoteKey -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

New-ItemProperty $rpcPath -name $remoteKey -value "0" -propertyType dword