Remote Desktop Connection Sessions and Logged in Users

Question

I have two computers with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition and am wanting to be able to log in to my account from each computer on each computer when I'm at the other computer. The problem I'm having is that when I try to connect to my computer at my grandparents from my computer at home, and my grandfather is using it, Remote Desktop Connection displays a message that a user is already logged on and that he will be disconnected if I connect. I need to be able to use Remote Desktop even if users are already logged in without logging them out. Is this possible? I mean if you can "Switch Users" and have more than one user logged in locally, why can't or how do I do the same remotely? I search around and found hacks about multiple concurrent Remote Desktop sessions but I need the same to apply to locally logged in users as well. If this is a limitation of Windows7 I seriously wonder why I always spend the extra money for the Ultimate Edition if it still has all these Home edition limitations and crippled features...

Answer 1

By design Remote Desktop on a workstation will only allow one user at a time to use the desktop. See this KB article for an explanation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280828

If your at home and want to login to the PC at the remote site and a user is logged in they will be disconnected (NOT logged off) meaning their session is still active in background and they will not lose any data, etc.

If you need to do a help desk type function, ie. allow the remote user to see what our doing on their desktop while you help them, you might look at Remote Assistance (built-in to the OS) or Virtual Network Computing (VNC) or TeamViewer. Personally I recommend and use TeamViewer for this type of function, ie. I support a couple of my sister-in-laws remotely.

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MS-MVP Windows Desktop Experience, "When all else fails, read the instructions"

Answer 2

oh yes and if I decide to force a remote desktop log in session, will the logged in users data be properly saved/etc?

Answer 3

I understand how TS, now Remote Desktop Connection, is designed to work (limiting active connections to one).  But I just can't believe that with the hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) that many enterprises spend on their Windows licensing that I can't (as an admin) securely connect to a PC and manage the machine without disconnecting the local user's session unless I'm using some 3rd party software (e.g. dameware, vnc, altiris, etc.)  Sure, there's the desktop sharing feature in NetMeeting and Remote Assistance, but those interrupt the user's work.  An administrator should be able to open a graphic session to manage a PC without disconnecting/interrupting the user and without resorting to 3rd party software.  Or am I missing something?

Answer 4

You could do this with Server 2003, so I assume that Server versions of Windows support this feature. Shelling out for new server versions of Windows is hefty though. Desktop versions of Windows don't support this feature.

Edit: Just to make it clear - on server versions you can login remotely to the machine while anyone else is logged in physically. For 99% of programs this is fine, but some (Firefox is one, maybe Outlook is another) don't like being run by the same user in 2 places at the same time.

Answer 5

I think I have a similar issue...

Using XP Pro (as a client) I could remote desktop into another XP Pro machine (the host) using the same account name and login password as the host.

And the host would already be logged in under the same user name and password.

I could see everything that was running on the host machine under the locally already logged in account.

Now when I logged in remotely, the user would immediately see a log in screen and be unable to see or interact with my Remote Desktop session.

This worked fine for our uses.

Now with Windows 7 Pro, the only way I can log in period is to create a second account and password and log into that second account.

The problem is that I need to see the account that is already logged in to perform any maintenance or see what errors the programs may have had in the account that is already

logged in.

Any way around this in Windows 7 Pro ???   

Or am I missing a vital setting here?

I'm greatly missing he way it wonderfully worked in XP Pro.