LinkedIn on Remko's Blog

Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Professionals 2008

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:02:38 +0000

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!

Patch Windows 2008 Terminal Server to allow more than 2 concurrent sessions

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:56:23 +0000

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.

Patch Windows 2003 Terminal Server to allow more than 2 concurrent sessions

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:19:48 +0000

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

Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator (not anymore!)

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:09:32 +0000

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:

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

If we try to open regedit we are denied access:

So how does this work?

Multiple Concurrent Terminal Server Sessions On Vista SP1

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:35:44 +0000

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).

Terminal Server Ping Tool

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:34:46 +0000

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: