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:
- 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)
- 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.
- Press Windows key and R and then type in cmd and press enter.
- 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
- Press enter and type in the password of the user with the admin creds and press enter.
- Then do a query of terminal sessions by doing the following:query session /server:servername
- Look for the sessions to pop up and find the desireable one to end.
- End it by typing in the following:reset session [ID] /server:servername
- You can re-run that query again to determine that the session has been disconnected.
- Exit out of that prompt by typing exit and then pressing enter.
- 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
What makes an effective IT Management Team?
IT Managers and Decision Makers, this was written for you.
IT Departments come in all different shapes and sizes. There are however some key elements I would recommend for effective IT management. It’s important to certainly have strategy.
Here is my list:
Asset Management and Risk Assessment
Time and time again you will need to know what your on hand IT Assets are and associated Risks to those assets. This is important and empowering knowledge to have to make recommendations or make decisions that can help add money back into budget. Its always good to know how much time is left on your IT assets and when to retire them as well as getting the most you can in return for the sale of used equipment. Understanding Risk is important so as to ensure your assets will be best protected and your interests are best met. So there are different formulas for determining this, what’s important is that you have established due diligence toward this area to protect your business from significant liabilities.
Change Control
With technology advancing every moment, it is very important to limit risk when implementing changes to your infrastructure and technology. It’s always good to have management on the same page when you are driving change. Also communication to employees is key to increasing change awareness. There are many aspects of change control, what is most important with regards to change is planning and communication. If you fail to plan you are planning to fail. And failure to communicate is a structural breakdown which will only drive distraction, confusion, and inefficiency.
Active measures to reduce costs by going Green
Being Green is a buzz phrase we have been hearing a lot about. What does it really mean to be Green? In my view it means just being more efficient. Does that mean working your employees to the bone with multi-tasking? No, absolutely not. You have the potential with building a Green working environment to motivate your employees without the pay raises per-se, ie. a dollar saved is a dollar earned. With technology today this is very much possible from the front line all the way back up to the top. There are a lot of ways to be Green and we certainly can help you do that, with the problems in today’s economy it is essential to save money in order to stay in business while maintaining your competitive edge.
Release Readiness
Release Readiness is very important in the Change Control and Project Management aspects. With there being a lot of change in technology its important to be ready to effectively implement those changes. They can be hardware or software. Its important to be proactive and provide due diligence in technology management, as the very efficiency you seek through it will simply go backward with immature or incorrect technology implementations.
IT Security
As more and more companies go virtual, and data is their value. It is important then that assets, availability, reliability, and performance all be examines and protected. Threats can come from many different directions. It is important to understand the threats and risks and take action to protect against them. So there are many different types of measures to be taken when building a Security Baseline. I listed this step later on because obtaining a full understanding of your IT Assets is key along with doing a Risk Assessment. These two elements will help management understand what security measures need to be taken. You are only as strong as your weakest link, also keep in mind your business is as valuable to you as your desire to stay in business. There is a great deal of cyberfraud and startups that literally steal from their competitors. If you value staying in business you simply cannot ignore IT Security and pure and proper implementation practices. Saving money in a foolish manner can put you more at risk. But doing things smarter will save you money. As long as there are cyber criminals there will always be a need for cyber security.
Effective Communications
Each of these are important as they develop well rounded focus as we tackle the most complicated and diverse IT issues. It’s important to run a tight ship that collectively bears a scalable setup, and adaptable setup. In my personal view innovative managers and decision makers can utilize effectively their abilities to keep their employees motivated while adding to bottom dollar.
Let me know how you do, with giving your focus to these principles.
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.
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.
Multiple Desktops in Windows
( Linux / *nix ) feel in Windows
Making Windows feel like an open source environment
There’s a cool app that helps you multi-task in an organized and efficient way in windows. If you have used Freebsd, Suse, Slackware, DSL, Fedora, RHEL, etc. They all have a few things different that Windows does not have, that is that they allow you to have multiple desktops. Now that is a good idea that allows efficient work to be done in each desktop. It helps to be able to track what you are triaging or working on. Here is a program that gives windows that functionality as well:
https://www.hpdit.com/sysinternals/Desktops.exe
Pretty cool…
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.
Great Tool for Windows Server Active Directory Exploration
Another great tool worth reviewing is adexplorer.exe which allows in most AD environments users the ability to go and look at ADS. So this can be useful for determining if users belong to the correct OU. It runs stand alone and does not require necessarily that you are an Enterprise\Domain Admin. Also you can save some time while drilling down throw to the root cause of an issue whether it be ACLs, Perms, etc. related.
https://www.hpdit.com/sysinternals/ADExplorer.exe
At HPD Global – VIT Cloud Services we certainly have had the benefit of using this tool for Fortune 100 companies, we can attest to having this knowledge and experience to get the job done for any type of business environment. Without getting full active directory access to do a PCI Audit we were able to use this tool which allowed object attributes to be ignored in Active Directory and allow us to do User Object account audits. This was in regards to all the Administrator accounts which is something looked at when performing PCI, SOX, and IAB, MRC Audits. Is compliance a mystery to you and your Org? We can certainly help you get on track with regards to compliance, which is something not going away. Contact us today.
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.
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.
