Remotely Restart Remote Desktop

If your a tech head like me then you might have a number of servers or computers around the office, home or even internet which you remote desktop too from time to time to use. Obviously this is a great time saver, not having to leave your desk to use a machine miles away is a great time saving.

However sometimes a connection might be refused, especially if there are no available licenses left on the machine you are trying to connect to.

A good example of this is one of my internet servers. The machine runs Windows 2000 which by default only has two remote desktop licenses. So if I connect from my laptop and then connect from my desktop thats both used. Now if I try to connect via a third machine I get a no available licenses message. Therefore you cant connect.

Not to bad if the machine is in the same building, but if its 250 miles away you either have to get someone to go look at it or go yourself. Not a real option if its in a datacentre.

To restart the Remote Desktop Protocol or Remote Desktop Service, whatever you want to call it you can do the following.

goto the DOS window, goto Start, Click Run and Type CMD and press return.

You should now have a black window called c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe - This is the DOS prompt window.

I will also add, you will need to know the name or ip address of your server.

To find out what computers are connected to the machine via RDP type:

qwinsta /server:<machine name or IP address>

and press return, you maybe asked for the username and password.

Once you have a list you need to kill the processes using RDP, type:

rwinsta 1 /server:<machine name or IP address>

By default the processes for RDP are 1, 2, 3, etc. So 1 is the logical place to start.

if you have more than 1 then you need to repeat the process with the next number listed with qwinsta.

Remember anybody connected when you do this will be disconnected.

So to recap, lets say our machine is called "mikesmachine"

To view the RDP processes we type:

qwinsta /server:mikesmachine

and to kill the rdp processes we type:

rwinsta 1 /server:mikesmachine

This works for me on all the machines I have tried it on I am sure that someone will give me an easier way of doing this.

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