I was hoping to get help with a problem we are seeing in our environment when remotely managing machines in our environment. We are not able to open the Disk Management console when remotely managing a machine on our domain. When I use my Windows 7 machine I am able to open the Computer Management and connect to Windows 7 and Windows XP machine remotely. I am able to see the Event Viewer and the Device Manager without a problem but when I try to connect to the Disk Management node I get the error.... Disk Management could not start the Virtual Disk Service (VDS) on 'COMPUTER'. This can happen if the remote computer does not support VDS, or if a connection cannot be established because it was blocked by Windows Firewall. For additional information about diagnosing and corrected this problem, see Troubleshooting Disk Management in Disk Management Help. •I am a system administrator and I can remotely connect to the machine without a problem •We disable the Windows Firewall on all corporate machines •I have removed McAfee to ensure it was not blocking •I have played with the system services and rebooted and this has not changed access I have gone through a lot of suggestions on these forums and Google and nothing has allowed access. Can you connect remotely to the Disk Management node from a Windows 7 machine to another Windows 7 or Windows XP machine? I need to manage both of these operating systems from a Windows 7 machine and this is the easiest way. Thanks for any help with this issue.

Hi, Please try this solution: Cause: If a remote computer does not support the Virtual Disk Service (VDS) or if a connection to the remote computer cannot be established because it is blocked by Windows Firewall, you may receive this error. Solution: If the remote computer supports VDS, you can configure Windows Firewall to allow VDS connections. If the remote computer does not support VDS, you can use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to it and then run Disk Management directly on the remote computer. To manage disks on remote computers that do support VDS, you must configure the Windows Firewall on both the local computer (where you are running Disk Management) and the remote computer. On the local computer, configure Windows Firewall to enable the Remote Volume Exception. Note: The Remote Volume Management Exception includes exceptions for Vds.exe, Vdsldr.exe, and TCP port 135. More detail, you can refer this article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771775.aspx Also make sure the Virtual Disk service is start and set to automatic. Hope that helps. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for the reply, I have set the Virtual Disk Service to automatic which doesn't help when connecting remotely. I have rebooted the machine to ensure that everything starts as it should and no changes. We do not use the Microsoft Firewall so this service is stopped and set to the Disabled state so I am not sure this has anything to do with it. As a test I went through all of the steps in enabling the firewall, setting the exceptions, and had the same results. So I changed everything back to how it was and disabled the firewall to get right back to where I started. We do not use the Windows Firewall so there must be something else. After searching I found something related and tried it and it works. I went into the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) and changed the following... Computer Policy\Administrative Templates\Windows Components \ Windows Remote Management (WinRM) \ WinRM Service Make the following change.... Allow automatic configuration of listeners ENABLED: Enter asterisk (* or your IP range) in IPv4 address box This did the trick, after a reboot I could then use the Disk Management console from a Windows 7 machine to a Windows 7 machine. Now I have to work on Windows 7 to Windows XP so my team can manage these machines as well from their Windows 7 machines. Thanks for the help, Dennis

Hello... It may be a little late, but i've been having this issue myself too... over here we have multiple 'stations' still running on XP while others have moved on to 7. The few ones on XP will stay on XP for the rest of their days as they need specific drivers for custom built hardware which is too expensive to be completely be made again.. (we even bought spare motherboards, cpu's and harddisks so this system is 'deadproof' for at lease 20 years, no matter what hardware is released in the mean time; our network is ipv6 already, so no issues there either about futureproofing) BUT!!! managing harddisks is indeed a pain in the *@$ if you want to go backwards/forwards between windows. I've been searching and searching too; after 3 days without solution i gave up... a week later i thought i'd try again but the other way around; let's see if xp can check the disks from 7... and all of a sudden the answer was right in front of me... "LDM is not registered. Local Disk Manager supports Win2K or newer versions. Check your operating system". WOW i got this while connecting to a definately NEWER version of windows then 2K (W7); and i understood that windows v6.x (vista, w7, w8) don't have a "LDM (Local Disk Manager". So keeping that in mind it just must be that windows v5.x (2k, xp) don't have a VDS (Virtual Disk Service) which is needed by the host you're using to manage the other system. It's a sad story but Microsoft flawed here... although for companies they want everyone to migrate every system to the latest version, leaving none behind... i Understand that; but i cant' do that since can't be guaranteed that the system i'm using on xp can do the same on 7... i DOES need a pci port (which are harder and harder to find) and it does need propritiary software that runs on xp... i'm sure microsoft won't pay the bill to convert that machine; although they will be happy enough to say that i should migrate cause of security reasons and the ease of running diskmgmt.msc without issues... Nowadays i just use a smart tool to keep track of the health of my disks and i use vnc to connect to that server if it needs any partitioning. I hope this made you any wiser ;) BoGy from .BE ;technician for everyone. Help should be available for everyone, not just 4 those with big wallets!