Use command prompt to control remote desktop connections on Windows Server

Hello,

while working on Sharepoint applications running on Windows Server machines, we often need to connect to the server via Remote Desktop (e.g. in order to perform debugging). Those who work this way often are probably familiar with the standard limitations of Windows Server systems: only two concurrent remote desktop connections at a time. If you’re working alone, this shouldn’t be a problem, however, in teams, it may sometimes happen that you’re denied logging in onto the system with the warning:

„The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections.”

This may happen not only when your work mates are busy doing their job, but sometimes also you are the one who is occupying one or two sessions, without actually being working on the server. Such situations occur, for example, if your local remote desktop connection window doesn’t get closed properly, or due to instable local operating system.

What then? We are not physically on the server and we cannot log on. If you are one of the “blocked” server’s administrators, the command prompt comes to rescue.

First of all, we can check who is logged on on the server. To do this, first we have to perform authentication in order for the server to allow us actually do this. The simple solution is to map a share on the server: either via accessing the share in Windows Explorer ( \servernameshare ) and entering your username and password, or, the same but using command line:

net use /user:MyUsername \servernameshare

After successful authentication, we can now check who is actually logged on with the query session command:

query session /server:MyServerName

The server name can be replaced by the IP address of the machine. The output of this command could look like this:

Seeing such list, we now know who is logged on, so we can contact the proper person. But what if we ourselves are the ones who occupy the sessions? Then we can disconnect the sessions remotely, too. Having noted the ID of the session which we received via previous method, we can use it in the reset session command:

reset session 1 /server:MyServerName

Now the session is free and we can log on to the machine again.