@Pete-S said in Force password change on first login over RDP:

Great, so it works if you use RDWeb.

But if you RDP directly to any Windows server or workstation it won't.

Nope. It won't. There's no way around that.

We also have Exchange on-premises so OWA works for that password change.

We find that if we rename the PC, then allow more than a day to go by before restarting, this can happen.

Also, if we rename a PC, then the user allows the PC to go into Lock mode (screen saver timeout with login required to return) they will encounter this upon wake up/re-logon.

In the above two cases a reboot usually resolves it, when it doesn't, we go in as local admin and disjoin then rejoin the domain to resolve it.

Also, in the above two cases, we did not lose the computer in active directory, so after the disjoin/rejoin you'd want to remove the orphan computer from AD.

There's an article online somewhere about why you should NOT disjoin and rejoin the domain in this case, but we have always done it this way and have never experienced ill effects.

@Pete-S said in NoMachine Server running, not found:

@travisdh1 said in NoMachine Server running, not found:

@gjacobse said in NoMachine Server running, not found:

This is a bit frustrating - It seems that NoMachine is 'hit and miss' being being able to receive a connection. Searching for a device that is online find none, and the device shows running. Restarting the service may fix it, but many times doesn't seem too, and restarting the computer leaves the same issue - not found.

Some threads suggest re-installing it - which I will do, but seems like a poor fix on a service that should run on boot.

It's it just my aggravation is causing this or am I looking for something else?

That's why I never ended up using NoMachine. Too many issues like that.

And it's not free for commercial use - at least the last time I looked.

Can be, depends which one you are using.

Sorted this out.
For some reason the install was setting Allow Global IP and Allow Default Route.
Once I unticked these and ticked All Managed IP it all began working.

@Dashrender said in MeshCentral Web RDP Client:

@scottalanmiller said in MeshCentral Web RDP Client:

You ever try this?

I've not, I keep forgetting that it even exists, lol.

@scottalanmiller said in Making an RDP Terminal Server with Ubuntu Linux:

I recommend the Remmina RDP client tool, it's the bomb.

I love Remmina as a client.

@syko24 said in Can remote desktop Win10 be remotely activated somehow?:

@Pete-S said in Can remote desktop Win10 be remotely activated somehow?:

Thanks guys. I tried accessing remote registry, remote powershell and ssh but without success. I have to find out how they do their remote administration and get them to enable rdp for me. It was worth a shot though.

Try MMC and see if you can add Services for their computer. If you can add that successfully then you can enable Remote Registry and then from there enable rdp. Make sure you restart the rdp service after making the registry change.

Another method would be if you have PDQ deploy installed on another system at the location, you can try to push a ScreenConnect or similar install to the system.

There are steps one needs to take to ensure remoteability in any kind of way you are hoping for. Either through specific group policies, in the base image, during deployment, via device management software, etc. It's something they would know they did. Any MMC snap in such as remote registry will have required specific steps be taken first to ensure access that way.

The best thing to do is ask, because it takes 2 minutes to write the question, then do other things while you wait for the answer, rather than wasting time and money throwing darts in the dark.

@pmoncho said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:

@Dashrender said in Windows RDS User Profiles - Migrate, Recreate or User Profile Disks?:

Cool, then you should have it easy.

FYI - Published apps still create a full profile on the RDS box, Just the desktop isn't presented to the user. If the application allows them to browse around, they could typically see the drive letters, the mapped printers, etc... that's why you still need to lock all that stuff down.

Thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind. I was debating about using UPD's like @wrx7m and that was my interest in this post.

Also, still planning out where to put Connection Broker, WebAccess and Licensing but that is another post.

For local profile management, UPDs are a lot cleaner. If we are not putting them on a file server across the network then a second partition/VHDX is set up for that task to keep them separate.

With the inclusion of FSLogix with RDS CALs/SALs now it's a no-brainer, IMNSHO, to set the project up on the FSLogix version.

Storage management is another reason why UPDs on a network or separate partition make sense. Keeping a local profile on the C:\ of the session host is messy and can cause issues down the road with users coming and going.

As far as the Broker/Gateway/Web put those roles on one VM but separate from the Session Host.

@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft Office - Licensing Questions For 3 Scenarios:

@flaxking said in Microsoft Office - Licensing Questions For 3 Scenarios:

I think you must be missing what's going on here. This removes the requirement to integrate more directly with MS Office, instead relying on a separate library that is provided standalone from Office and thus allows saving to Excel. We've had zero issues with using this library, which is actually pretty uncommon for us.

The issue is flexibility. Using third party libraries, you can integrate with Excel or with anything else. Using the Office libraries, every user, in ever system, is bound by the limitations of the most problematic. It makes deployments more costly, and more complex.

That's true, it's the kind of self perpetuating lock-in that has served Microsoft so well. People use Excel, and they ask for saving to Excel spreadsheet, so we create the integration specially to allow Excel and not include ODF, then we help keep the industry locked into using Excel because that's all we support unless you want to just save to CSV.

As for the cost and complexity of deployments... that could be true, except that the installation of our main software is already so complex and costly that dealing with potentially installing this library is the easiest part. I think we probably only have one other developer who would be able to figure out how to install it. I've never heard of any client's IT that have been able to figure out how to install it (just calls from those who have tried), client services has to do literally every install.

@ilyas said in Reset 120 Day Grace Period for Windows RDS Server with PowerShell:

@scottalanmiller

Hi, Thanks for wonderful script that save my time.
Could You please guide me how we can run this script on multiple servers?

I tried foreach PowerShell method but it does not work.

From the ISE, load the script and then enter-pssession for each system. Once connected, run the script from the ise. Sorted.

@gjacobse said in Add a User to Remote Desktop Users in Windows Remotely:

I seem to remember doing this via ScreenConnect CMD

Only works if SC is installed, which if it was, we'd not need to do it 🙂

@JasGot said in Updated - Connecting to 1 Site With Separate Logins/Several IPs:

@wrx7m said in [Updated - Connecting to 1 Site With Separate Logins/Several IPs]>

This works on Windows 10 (1703, 1809, 1903), Server 2016 (1607), Server 2012 R2 and Server 2008 R2.

Tor is another option. Proxies are already out there.

Lots of guides on setting it up to run multiple browsers from different IPs. We did it years ago for a project and it was perfect. Took a few minutes to setup, but was perfect for the task.

There's even a bash script to do all the setup for you. (Not on Windows, of course)

Thanks. This has been up and running via squid on Fedora for several months and works really well.

@dafyre said in Running Xrdp on Ubuntu:

Not sure what to do about the EFI issue....

What I do when I want to use mine like that is set up x11vnc-server and then run it through XRDP (and choose the console option). It's faster than stock VNC... Don't ask me why, lol. I haven't gotten instructions for that yet, I don't think.

If I remember right, after a reboot, you have to connect, close the connection, and then reconnect back using the XRDP+VNC option. I don't have any installation instructions for that setup on hand though. I can work it out and post them if you like.

This is likely where I went 'rouge' in that I didn't use x11vnc-server.. I had notes on that,.. at least I believe and have misplaced them. so I had forget that.

As I was starting to have other 'OS' Kernel issues (the mouse and keyboard wasn't working correctly) I nuked that partition from Windows, and will rebuild. Maybe it'll survive as I am of course getting grub 'errors' since that partition is gone.

I'm just reading the manual, but taking a stab I would think

xfreerdp /multimon /monitors:0,1

RDP at home is fine.