SBS 2003 missing Help and Support?

Occasionally Windows 2003 Small Business Server will "forget" (it appears to be an issue with one of the recent updates) about the Help and Support service. Unfortunately as this powers the Remote Assistance system, which I use to resolve some user incompetence / desktop configuration issues remotely, its slightly annoying when this happens.

I was talking to a friend in a similar situation from another company, and it appears as if he didn't know how to resolve the issue. As such I present the no-reboot solution:

  1. Open a command prompt and change directory to %WINDIR%\pchealth\helpctr\binaries
  2. Run the following commands:
    start /w helpsvc /svchost netsvcs /regserver /install net start helpsvc

Privacy or paranoia?

It would appear that I'm not the only one who's worried about the privacy situation in this country. Unfortunately I fear that a lot of people couldn't give 2 hoots and will continue to give up their freedoms for greater convenience. To paraphrase the response on the topic, from a friend: "We're not living in dictatorship. Why should this bother me? I'm not doing anything wrong!".

And people wonder why I want to move out of this country. The question is; would it be worth it? Are we likely to see the rest of the world following in our collective apathetic footsteps?

Disruption

Sorry for any disruption in the next few days, across various domains. Things are moving!