A while back I blogged about Remote Desktop in Windows XP. Since the start of my Vista Quest I have continued to use the Vista remote desktop with great success. That is until I installed Services pack 1.
Here lately I’ve been noticing some differences when I log into some servers I manage. Nothing drastic mind you but there were some things that were no longer the same. So I got to Googeling…
I use the /console when logging in to these servers. For those who don’t know the /console switch gives you the ability to log into a remote server with out using a Terminal Service client and it also logs you into the desktop that you would see if you were standing at the machine. So, If you started a process that was going to take a long time, you could log into that session remotely and check on or finish the process. And if you needed to install some software that could not be installed “remotely” the /console switch would allow you to continue.
With the introduction of Vista SP1 the /console switch no longer holds the same function. They have changed the /console to /admin The main reason for this is for compatibility with the new Server 2008 platform.
Server 2008 doesn’t have a concept of a console that you can login to as that session (session 0) is for services and doesn’t have an interactive session associated with it. The /admin switch is to login to the session that would have the physical keyboard/screen attached to it.
So… For those of you using Vista with Service Pack 1 you need to start using /admin instead of /console. It appears this is true even connecting to Server 2003.
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