How to get RDP access again with multiple sessions on a machine

How to get RDP access again with multiple sessions on a machine

You may run into this scenario from time to time:

I am unable to RDP or TS into a server remotely because 2 people are logged in and the console port is in use.

Let’s just say that the people or person occuping the maximum number of allowed connections(including console) is new and doesn’t realize that they need to actually disconnect the session and not just click the ‘x’. So you are an admin too but you can’t RDP in. Here is an alternative method:

1. Locate a machine that is running the same OS. In this case it was WIN2K8. You can obtain a remote prompt on that machine by using psexec.exe from:
   

   http://www.hpdit.com/sysinternals/psexec.exe

   Then you will want to query the terminal server of the machine you are not able to RDP into. (Discussed later)

2. Copy the binary by clicking into it and saving locally to a place where you can find and execute it easily from the command line.
3. Press Windows key and R and then type in cmd and press enter.
4. CD to the directory you saved the psexec.exe binary and run the following command:psexec -u domain\admin_creds \\servername cmd

   *Note you can always verify you have a remote command line prompt by checking the hostname as follows:

   hostname

   Press enter and it will produce the system’s hostname

5. Press enter and type in the password of the user with the admin creds and press enter.
6. Then do a query of terminal sessions by doing the following:query session /server:servername
7. Look for the sessions to pop up and find the desireable one to end.
8. End it by typing in the following:reset session [ID] /server:servername
9. You can re-run that query again to determine that the session has been disconnected.
10. Exit out of that prompt by typing exit and then pressing enter.
11. Launch an RDP session ie.

mstsc /v:servername

A connection.

Virtual IT Consulting the right way

The majority of IT Consulting companies make their effectiveness as Consultants of little to no avail.  Why? You may ask.  Because these Owners often digress and focus on technologies and play with it… and view their clients as a distant lower priority.  However, if you get this part of “IT” wrong, you will doom your IT consulting company to “clueless geek” status. It’s crucial that you understand one extremely important principle here: Recruiting and retaining clients is tantamount to your growth, confidence and stability as a company. Keeping up with the latest and greatest IT should never take a priority over your IT consulting company’s mission objectives!

In other words, don’t get side-tracked with the newest mobile devices running as a front end to a cloud back end, the new open source OS or applications.   Become a hunter and capture the business opportunities surrounding how you solve your customer’s biggest business problems with your recommended IT solutions. The real mission of IT consulting company is capturing business, retaining and generating new business.
How is this done?

You can do this by offering cloud solutions.  Leverage automated solutions.  Think Smart, Act Smart, be Smart as they always said in the Navy to me.
To put this all in perspective with your computer consulting company, you need to understand and embrace the concept of virtual IT consulting.
Virtual IT  or VIT is what allows your IT consulting company to function as an extension of your clients. Your computer consulting company essentially becomes the outsourced IT department for your clients.  This becomes a Win-Win, for example your clients can get real cutting-edge Fortune 500 IT consulting along with making their budgets go further in meeting their day to day objectives.
As owner or manager of an IT consulting company in this role, you will most likely become the CIO (chief information officer), CTO (chief technology officer), IT manager or entire IT Department business clients.  And just like any well-rounded internal IT department, your virtual IT consulting business will need to provide, , a complete nuts and bolts up to CTO  solution that includes services like help desk, desktop support, network administration, web design, SEO, IT engineering, security, training, procurement, and asset management… because anything short of the complete virtual IT solution will leave consulting money on the table.
The Bottom Line

Most IT consulting companies are making a huge mistake when it comes to their small business endeavors… because these IT consulting company owners get too focused on the technology, at the expense of the business opportunities. In order for your IT consulting company to prosper, make sure that you understand the concept of virtual IT and build virtual IT into every major business decision for your IT consulting company has before its helm. To continue learning more about how you can use virtual IT to grow your computer consulting company, pay us a visit and fill out the Contact Us form, for the network assessment and 1 hour free IT Consulting to your Business.  Visit us at http://www.hpdit.com

Generate your own 4096 Bit Encryption Keypair for Security

Let say you want to raise the level of encryption when you SSH to your linux box, you may feel that 1024 bit encryption isn’t working out very well for you. 

Here’s a fast and simple tool to use: 

It’s called puttygen.exe can be found at:

www.putty.nl

You won’t have to worry about doing this via the command line.  High security generation made easy.

Remote command line prompt in Windows

For those of you that love working with the command line here is a type for working on a machine remotely without having RDP, VNC access to that Windows machine, or you might like to do things the remote shell way, ie. SSH, Stelnet, etc. If the answer is “Yes” here is a way for you to do it in Windows OS environment:

 
1. Go to:http://www.hpdit.com/sysinternals/psexec.exe
2. Click the psexec.exe binary
3. Save to a location you can execute from the command line, like %systemdrive%\system32\ or C$\system32\
4. Press Windows Key plus R and type in cmd and press enter
5. CD to the directory that contains psexec.exe or you can execute it from the absolute path, or if you have it in your in environment path just simply execute from the command line prompt
6. If you wish to obtain another machine’s command prompt without having to TS into that machine type the following: psexec.exe \\computername “cmd”
7. There you have it remote command line access.
8. When you are done type exit to get back to a local prompt.

Registry hack to allow easy command line anywhere access

Command Prompt anywhere Registry Hack

1. Click start
2. Click run
3. type in notepad
4. press enter
5. paste the following code:
   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Command Prompt Here]
   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Command Prompt Here\command]
   @=”;cmd.exe /k \”;cd %1\”;”;
    

Into the notepad

1. Then from there click save as. Make sure you selected all files instead of .txt
2. Name the file whatever you want but add the extension .reg
3. Save it to a location you can execute the file to add the reg mod
4. From there execute the file, then press Windows Key plus the letter E
5. You then will be able to click into a drive like the C: drive and then right click a folder the option to Command Prompt Here will be available
6. Left click that option and you will see a prompt come up in that location.

Windows Server 2003-2008 How to tell if a Server is a VM

Ramp up Excitement for CES 2011

This year HPD Global IT Consulting has been chosen as an Industry Analyst to contribute blogger coverage on the great event of CES 2011.  In the meantime we will also be networking and forming valuable business connections/alliances.  What we are hoping to cover will be Virtual and Mobile technologies essentially the way of the future.  We are starting to see many of the technologies featured 2 years ago starting to take shape in the market today.

We bring real market experience and knowledge to CES and have assisted other established Corporations in being legally and marketable at CES.  It is certainly and expensive show, and requires a large investment for most small businesses, but if networking is done correctly one can forge alliances for years to come.  We anticipate some of the mobile technologies we will be covering will be HTC, Windows Mobile Xbox 360 lite gaming for mobile devices, laptop innovations, cutting edge technologies by way of mobility and remote working.

By covering these areas of interest, we believe that we are paving the way for understanding of the importance of mobile and virtual tech support and service. 

Are you PCI Compliant?

More and more businesses are going virtual each day and put their business to work for them 24 hours a day.  With, e commerce in expansion in mind it becomes totally imperative to establish standards of security.  The Payment Card Industry or PCI has established pretty clear standards for companies that wish to utilize this fast growing and highly lucrative line of business.  Funded by Visa and Mastercard primarily; PCI was developed to ensure consumer confidence in purchasing goods and services over the internet.  Whether you are a small or large corporation and you have an established online business, you are expected to be PCI Compliant.  Failure to do so can cost your business profound costs in litigation, fees from Visa and Mastercard, and loss in potential business.  It simply is not worth the risk to your business to lack in due diligent security.  As a solution, HPD Global IT Consulting offers Enterprise-wide PCI Compliance SaaS solution to businesses that are small as well as large.  We implement all DSS standards and provide you with a security baseline to start you off with security due diligence.

More and more these days it is becoming totally necessary to be compliant with Industry and Government standards or face paying huge fines that many businesses do not survive financially.  The security threats are real and more and more we are hearing about this in the media.  Security crackers have caused billions in damages, we can only estimate how much is kept away from the public eye and government by private organization who pay hush money to keep customer satisfaction up.  PCI compliance really covers a lot of areas in which its possible for Card holder information to be stolen.

The core of the PCI DSS is a group of principles and accompanying requirements, around which the specific elements of the DSS are organized:

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

Protect Cardholder Data

Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data
Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software
Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Regularly Monitor and Test Networks

Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

Maintain an Information Security Policy

Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

Of course each and every requirement is probed further during an audit to ensure necessary security due diligence is in place.  It truly does take a lot of hard work to build a security baseline and managerial understanding, let us help lessen the headache with our secure Cloud Services.  Contact us today.

Fortune 500 IT Practices: Small to Medium Businesses

The Questions:

Don’t you wish you could have a budget to allow your IT departments to flourish without the additional cost of a full time staff, additional contractors, or H1B’s to further explode your budget into the point of no return?

Don’t you want to know if your IT infrastructure us functioning as successfully as that of a Fortune 500 company?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, then look no further; High Performance Delivered Global IT Consulting (100% US Based with US employees) is here to help you with all your technical needs.

With over 30 years of experience in Information Technology (IT) we have the solutions that will help you cut cost and increase your performance for your day to day Information Technology operations.

(more…)

Virtual IT (VIT) Cloud Services

Hello World most see as a build verification test after the successful coding completion of a program.  The context in which I wish to use it today is in relation to Virtual IT (VIT), Cloud Services, SaaS, SOA.  HPD Global IT Consulting has always believed in being 100% US Owned and Operated while providing solid, sustainable and effective Virtual IT.  So let me show you how we do that for you, we live eat and breath in the Internet which is all you have to worry about, for example we come to you over the Cloud.  Our cutting edge solutions will guarantee removing headache out of IT, we do this by automating intuitive and smart actions in response to routine day to day IT Business practices in the ideal IT department.  See we have modeled and fine tuned best practices so we understand IT so well we can provide and replicate IT success and ROI virtually over the internet as we have done many times before.  So what this means is huge cost savings to you the Business Owner and sustained affordable IT.  Our goal is really to not sell you anything additional like many other IT consultants, our goal is like yours, affordable cheap IT.  Would you like to have the feel of a performance stable Fortune 100 IT Department?  Would you like to know that your IT works properly and is accessible when you need access?  Are you tired of paying high amounts of money when a system breaks and a technician has to come out on site to repair it?  Partner with us and let us compliment your existing IT Department.  Although we operate 100% virtually, we are very real and can prove to you solid ROI.  Sign up or give us a call so we can answer all your questions and give you more information about how we can make your IT make more sense.