Remko Weijnen's Blog (Remko's Blog)

About Virtualization, VDI, SBC, Application Compatibility and anything else I feel like

Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Professionals 2008

So I will be attending the Tech-Ed EMEA in Barcelona, maybe some of you are going too?

It would be nice to meet some of my readers, so maybe I’ll see you there!
Join Me at Tech·Ed EMEA Connect for IT Professionals!

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  • Well it took some time but I patched Terminal Server for Windows 2008 to allow unlimited sessions in Remote Administration mode.

    This patch is for 32 bit English version. In order to install it you need to perform the steps below. Before you start please check if using this patch is allowed according to your country’s law and your license agreement.

    (more…)

    As you might know Windows 2003 Server accepts at most 2 concurrent Terminal Server sessions (and 1 console session) in Remote Administration mode (which is the default). Of course if you switch to Application Mode you can have an unlimited number of sessions but this requires licenses and a license server.

    When Terminal Server creates a new session it checks if the new session is either a console session or a help assistant session and if not it allocates a license. The function that performs this check is called CRAPolicy::Logon (more…)

    Most administrator will want to prevent normal users from opening Regedit and a command prompt. Usually this is done by activating the “Prevent access to registry editing tools” and “Prevent access to the command prompt” policy settings. They are located under User Configuration | Administrative Templates | System:

    gpedit

    Activating the policies will set the matching keys in the registry:

    regkey

    If we try to open regedit we are denied access:

    regedit1

    So how does this work? (more…)

    There are several patched terminal server dll’s floating around in the net to allow multiple concurrent Terminal Server session on Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. But they all have the same limitations:

    It’s not possible to start a session to Localhost, this is because the Terminal Server client does a check to see if you are running Personal Terminal Server (Vista/XP) and denies Localhost or 127.0.0.1 if true (127.0.0.2 works though).

    It’s not possible to start multiple sessions with the same user. The patch for Vista RTM did allow for this but in Service Pack 1 some Terminal Server code has moved to the Local Session Manager (lsm.exe) so we need to patch this file as well.

    Offcourse we need to patch Terminal Server to allow unlimited session on Vista as well.

    VPatch files are in the download link below.

    Vista SP1 Patches (8951 downloads )

    Terminal Server Ping Tool

    A while ago I included a new undocumented API into my JwaWinsta unit which is called WinStationServerPing. This API “pings” a Terminal or Citrix server and verifies that Terminal Server is up and running. It is not the same as a regular networking ping! This API actually makes a connection to a (remote) Terminal Server and verifies that Terminal Server runs and accepts connections.

    I wrote a small cmdline tool that uses this API to ping a Terminal Server which can be used to quickly determine if a Terminal Server is up and running. I named it WTSPing.

    So how does it work? Open up a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and type WTSPing /? to see the help:

    (more…)

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