Remotely Assisting a VDI User

[tbrouwer]

Is this possible?

How would I remotely interact with a user's session that is using a terminal RDP'ed into a VDI farm? I can't use VNC because it complains that somebody is already remotely logged in.

I know I could go to the console through VC, but I would have to log them out, so that would defeat the purpose.

[chouse]

Sorry - I was logged in as myself on my laptop so I was sending the request to a test user logged in to a VM.

[tbrouwer]

OK, same here.

After testing this some more, it seems that it eventually will go. The box pops up on the end user's system with a white background for over a minute. Then the prompt comes up for them to hit Yes. If I log into the User's PC with domain admin rights, no problems. ugh

Hmmm, it is not only related to the domain admin accounts. If I log into the PC locally with the administrator account, it works fine too. hmmmmmm

Message was edited by:

tbrouwer

[tadheckaman]

I just got this working on my system. The trick is a registry tweak to allow this on XP SP2. SP1 works without any registry entries.

I would set a group policy that allows remote control without asking the users permission, to allow easier administration.

Add this registry key on all your XP systems (required only on SP2):

\[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server]

"AllowRemoteRPC"=dword:00000001

Then goto any XP or 2003 system (logged onto the domain as a user that has permission to remote a session) and type this in:

shadow 0 /server: + * (num pad *) to disconnect.

I wrote an AutoIT script to create a simple gui. I am not a programmer, but this worked for me.

#Region

$Form1_1 = GUICreate("Shadow a remote XP session", 424, 60, 193, 115)

$Combo1 = GUICtrlCreateCombo("", 16, 24, 233, 25)

GUICtrlSetData($combo1,"v_user1|v_user2|v_user3|v_user4")

$Label1 = GUICtrlCreateLabel("Pick a computer you would like to connect to:", 16, 8, 220, 17)

$Button1 = GUICtrlCreateButton("Connect", 256, 8, 153, 41, 0)

GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)

#EndRegion

While 1

$nMsg = GUIGetMsg()

Switch $nMsg

Case $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE

Exit

Case $Combo1

Case $Label1

Case $Button1

$combostate = GUICtrlRead ($Combo1, 1)

MsgBox(0, "GUI Event", "Now connecting you to " & $combostate & ", please wait while connecting")

ShellExecute ('shadow', ' 0 /server:' & $combostate & ' /V', "c:\windows\system32\")

EndSwitch

WEnd

[tbrouwer]

Wow, Thanks! If I can get this to work it will be beautiful.

Currently throwing some errors but im messing around with group policy trying to get it to work.