Remote Desktop tips and tricks¶

Here's a list of tips and tricks that I have compiled from my reading list, I've seen a tip here and a trick there, but not a full list, so here it is (for me to remember J)

shutdown or restart a workstation¶

Note: These tips work on Windows XP, but there is no guarantee that they will work in future versions of Windows.

One way to do this is to run Task Manager and select your shutdown option from the "Shut Down" menu.

Another trick is to click on the desktop and type Alt+F4. This will call up the shutdown dialog, where you get the usual shutdown options like "Shut down", "Shut down without installing updates", "Restart", "Stand by", and "Hibernate".

These next two tricks are documented and will continue to work in future versions of Windows:

If you're a command line person, you can run shutdown.exe, but that program supports only shutdown and restart; it doesn't do stand-by or hibernate. But the shutdown.exe program has a serious flaw: It requires you to have administrator privileges. If you are a limited user with shutdown privileges, the shutdown.exe program will complain. (Which means that I don't use it.)

Finally, if your computer isn't using Fast User Switching, you can type the Ctrl+Alt+End hotkey, which is the Remote Desktop version of Ctrl+Alt+Del and consequently takes you to a dialog where you can do various system-type things, among them logging off and shutting down.

Connecting to terminal services when all active sessions are used:¶

mstsc /console

Mapping drives via Remote Desktop¶

Open the remote desktop application. Click on the Options button and go to the Local Resources tab. The bottom section of the tab is titled Local Devices, and there you will see a check box labeled Disk drives. Checking this box will automagically connect all disk drives on you local machine to the remote machine when you open the RDC.

Connecting via remote desktop to the non-standard port¶

Suppose you change the port for the virtual machine to listen in on port 3900. You simply append 3900 to the server name (or IP) when connecting via Remote Desktop.

Important shortcut keys:¶

Alt + Page Up
Switches between programs from left to right.

Alt + Page Down
Switches between programs from right to left.

Alt + Insert
Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.

Alt + Home
Displays the Start menu.

Ctrl + Alt + Break
Switches the client between a window and full screen.

Ctrl + Alt + End
Brings up the Windows Security dialog box.

Ctrl + Alt + Pause
Toggles between fullscreen and windowed mode
(note that this does not set the client desktop to the correct size)

Alt + Del
Displays the Windows menu

Ctrl + Alt + Num -
Places a snapshot of the client's active window on the clipboard

Ctrl + Alt + Num +