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Console switch for mstsc?

As a Systems Administrator, I do a lot of troubleshooting every day for end-users. I also look after a number of servers and often have to complete very long tasks on these servers. One particular job that I’m working on at the minute is importing users .pst files into Enterprise Vault archives. This is a time consuming process that requires you to be logged in all the time.

So normally, I’d open up a console RDP session to the win2003 server using mstsc /v: servername /console. This connects to session 0 on the box and allows me to disconnect the session and leave it running overnight and not have my session time out and cause the job to fail. However recently I updated mstsc.exe on my machine to version 6.0 to resolve another problem I was having remoting to my XP machine from my Vista PC at home. However it appeared that the /console switch no longer worked. Also when the /? switch was used, it wasn’t even mentioned.

This creates a problem in that I couldn’t connect to console sessions to complete long tasks. However, while looking at the above instructions I noticed the /admin switch. Did they just rename it? I tried it and excellently I was able to log on to a console session created with the old mstsc application using the /console switch. Brilliant news. So to connect to any console session on a win2003 box all I had to do was mstsc /v: servername /admin. I decided to follow it up however to see why the change was made and if indeed if any change was made. I came across the following article http://blog.shijaz.com/2008/01/no-more-mstscexe-console.html which explained the situation with the application and why the change was made. Also, this is going to come up even more with the increased uptake of windows server 2008, as explained in the above article. It makes for an interesting read and explains Microsofts thinking about how console sessions will work in future (i.e. not at all ).

Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Remote Desktop Protocol, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows XP