Friday, April 22, 2011

Enable Remote Desktop... REMOTELY!

I often need to RDP to a client's computer from another machine on the domain, however it becomes problematic when RDP is not enabled on their machine. Well here is a registry hack that you can do to enable RDP ... wait for it... REMOTELY!

1.Logon to a machine on the same network as as a domain admin:Start > run > regedit.
**Insert cautionary registry editing warning here**

2.From regedit: File > Connect Network Registry… > Input the computer name you need to enable RDP on and click OK

3.Navigate to the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server key and change the “fDenyTSConnections” REG_DWORD value from 1 TO 0 (Remote Desktop enabled)

4.Reboot the target machine from command prompt with: “shutdown /m \\computername /r” MAKE SURE YOU USE THE /m FLAG OTHERWISE YOU COULD ACCIDENTALLY REBOOT THE SERVER!

5.RDP to their machine

6.Send Mike a cookie

I would assume this goes without saying, but just in case, the target computer must be connected to the same network as the machine you are on.

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