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

Efficiency through Technology and Quality by HPD Global SaaS Solutions

These days it is most important to take the business battle to strategic design. Some concerns with the Economy as it is are to find cheaper ways to increase efficiency without hurting quality. Technology is one strong avenue to do that through. Some careful attention should be given by management into various areas surrounding this. Consider the following:

What areas of your work flow can be automated?
How utilized is your present technology?
Have you considered efficiency through leverage of technology?
Could you double your output with quality by doing things different?

These questions help us better determine as management what areas we should push to resolution on a more level approach. I am going to make a bold statement about our present economic situation. I believe that the businesses the utilize creativity, strategic design, and technology toward doing things smarter (different) will be the companies that take us further into the new millenium and will be tomorrow’s successful companies. You have heard that the best way to win is thinking outside the box. Technology when implemented successfully with intelligent engineers will not only yield success but a peace of mind. You will want to ensure that you deal with solid Technology Experts when making these changes. To an extent it will involve vision and entrepreneurship, but it can be done. So this will be an area that all technology management will face if they have not faced it so far. It is the dynamics of where Global Business is going, you just have to think outside the box and be the first to the fight. HPD Global has multiple SaaS solutions you should contact us to save money.

Using Ubuntu Server as a Desktop and Cost Savings

Cost Savings and Technology advantages of Ubuntu Server

Most of you are familiar with GPL/GNU Open Source Software. I wanted to recommend a highly stable and cheap to free open source server. Ubuntu meaning ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other. The meaning behind the them is something quite intrinsic to the creation of the technology. In a humanity sense open source software allows individuals, groups, or entire communities to contribute in some way to the development of the software. The overall output of the product is of higher quality, testing, and also more in line with what the user wants.

Since Ubuntu open source you have the option to change it. So yes this is Linux. I wanted to state however that Ubuntu is the most supported version of Linux out there, and that you can do anything with it as you would a Windows Server. You have have the option to turn it into a desktop with a simple command line entry such as this:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

The wonderful thing about open source is you feel or get empowered through the transparency of what you observe. Also how you can customize and change things to better suit the needs of your IT department or Organization. So now on to the advantages. Ubuntu is a light weight server out of the box, or you can make it more robust. It can easily be converted into any type of back end server ie: File, Web, Email, Media, Authentication, Proxy, Code Repository, Load Balancing. Just about anything you want it can be turned into that. So let me point you to the documentation for reference so you will be able to observe and learn or consider the cost savings you can benefit from.

Ubuntu Home Page

At HPD Global – VIT Cloud Services we run Ubuntu and several other open source solutions on top of traditional Microsoft Windows Server. We feel this brings greater value to our customers as they have the option to tailor the technologies we offer to better suit their needs. Contact us today for more IT Profitability.

Removing Artio . cz and / or Kanga Internet . com meta tags / link from your Joomla pages

The Issue:  A spammer places their Website links in all your page’s metadata
The problem with Joomsef is that although it is great it has a down side SEO. The standard Joomsef component has advertising used in it and this is produced in the form of the Meta Generator tag in the pages displayed. This can affect website ranking in search engines. It also bloats the meta tag information with no relational ad content. There can also be output at the bottom of the pages that have a link to the Joomsef website, in my case Kanga Internet.
The Joomsef 1.5.1 version still has a file called signature.b64 included with it. This file is checked in every call or click on the website links. The signature file is a base 64 encoded string that, when decoded, contains the a HTML link to Artio. Simply removing the base 64 file will not work and removing the mention of the base 64 file from within the calling PHP code will not work so I have modified the code to not even look for the file and removed all checking for it. The code is quicker as it doesnt do a all the processing, decoding, placement, checking and the display of the advert that would normally happen on every click.

After locating the file signature.b64 open it for edit.  You will want to copy the entire text string then commence decoding of Base 64.  It should look something like this:

PGJyIC8+PHNwYW4+PGEgaHJlZj1cImh0dHA6Ly93d3cua

2FuZ2FpbnRlcm5ldC5jb21cIiB0aXRsZT1$

There are many Base 64 decoders online as well as downloadable programs+source code.  Use one of them to decode the string and you will see it reveals clearly what these spammers seek to spam your pages with:

Now like some of you I am sure you went and installed KangaInternet’s solution under misleading pretences from KangaInternet.bomb (hopefully) that they were providing us a wonderful service by riding the software of Artio.cz’s spam, well not only did they do that, but well like Gollum’s love for the ring they also could not put down the spamming and well in my case they opted to put their own website link, which really upset a lot of web masters developers including myself.  I don’t know about you, but no one likes to be mislead into thinking someone is giving the community back a solution only to find out that they have been tricked into having a very similar spam problem from in this case kangainternet.  Plus, Kanga internet didn’t write the code, Artio did, also what relational content does Kanga Internet provide to my website, so yes having these foolish tags in your pages will simple hurt your ranking in Google and boost some dumb chap’s shoddy company, I would call these acts grayhat SEO, some might say blackhat.  Anyways what a relief it is to not have that junk in my pages.

Performance tuning the Windows System Drive

From time to time the old issue of alert or log spamming will come up.  With it the usual performance degradation and CPU throttling issues as well.  During these times, it is best to find the large temp or log files and remove them from your Windows System Drive, for return to performance stability (RTPS).  This can be done through Windows Search.
 
Press Windows Key then press S
 
If you have downloaded Windows Search you will need to on the left side select Search Companion.
 
Click all files and folders
 
From there then:
Click What size is it? Double arrows to expand
 
Then you can put in the size of the files.  You can search for different file types as well such as (*.tmp, *.tpm, *.chk, *.log)
 
Select all (ctrl+a) then shift+del.
 
Also you can modify system paging to use one file rather than many when creating the paging file.  This will help improve drive performance as well as minimize on orphaned files.  That can be done in System Properties – Advanced – Under performance click settings – than advanced tab – click change – set the minimum and maximum to 1.5 times the physical memory – click set – reboot for changes.
 
This should help you remove unnecessary files while optimizing system performance.

SaaS: Software as a Service

Thanks to the internet, high speed connectivity, and rapid development of applications over the internet, we have the birth of Virtual IT – Cloud Services.  Imagine if you will the ability to have your IT Department totally running from the cloud for a flat rate?  Its happening.  A lot of services can be provided through SaaS (Software as a Service) via the Internet, these being:

1. Backups
2. Security Baseline
3. PC Optimization
4. Malware removal
5. Remote Desktop Troubleshooting
6. Analysis
7. Web Development
8. Internet Marketing SEO/SEM
9. Programming
10. Patching

Most of your Help Desk, IT Administration, and whole IT Department functions can be outsourced with high ROI.

Would you like to outsource your IT to a well reputable 100% usa firm?  We are making that happen for many.

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.