Can't move or access WSS Central Admin

Question

We have several WSS Servers:

• WSS1
• WSS2
• WSS3
• WSS4

SharePoint thinks that Central Administration is on WSS3 and that it can be access via SSL on port 22641. The problem is that central administration is not there. It was removed using the config wizard. We removed central admin from all servers to clean everything out, and we tried installing Central Admin on WSS1. The alternate access mappings still point to central admin on WSS3. We tried deleting the alternate access mappings, but SharePoint won't let you delete central admin's mapping. Later, we removed central admin from all of our servers and tried creating the Central Admin website on WSS3, where SharePoint already thinks it is. But for some reason SharePoint is creating the alternate access mappings using SSL, and we don't have a certificate for the server.

• Why is SharePoint creating alternate access mappings routing an https internal URL by default?
• How can we move central administration to a new server?

We are using WSS 3.0.

Answer 1

The shortcut to the Central Administration site is not a real URL shortcut, but a shortcut to spconfigui.exe that determines the URL from a registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS\

Edit the CentralAdministrationURL value to reflect the correct location.

A lot of interesting scenarios about the location of the Central Administration website can be found in this very detailed article by Spencer Harbar.