Thursday, March 13, 2008

Vista Remote Desktop Command Line Options

For those of you out there who are using the Microsoft Vista SP1 and routinely use the Remote Desktop Connection utility to connect to terminal services clients, you've probably found out that the /console option no longer works. The command is now "/admin"

Windows Vista SP1 installs MSTSC.exe version 6.0.6001.18000 on to your computer, the only way to discover this information is to browse to the MSTSC.exe file in explorer which is located in the c:\windows\system32\ directory. Right click on MSTSC.exe and select properties, then select the "Details" tab

You can find all these startup commands by running "MSTSC /?" from the run command, and because Microsoft in all their wonder only outputs this data in a screen where you cannot copy the text from (unless you know the trick) I have posted the output here for you to use as you see fit.

OUTPUT FROM MSTSC /? Command:

MSTSC [] [/v:] [/admin] [/f[ullscreen]]
[/w: /h:] [/public] | [/span] [/edit "connection file"] [/migrate]

"connection file" -- Specifies the name of an .rdp file for the connection.


/v: -- Specifies the remote computer to which you want to connect.


/admin -- Connects you to the session for administering a server.


/f -- Starts Remote Desktop in full-screen mode.


/w: -- Specifies the width of the Remote Desktop window.


/h: -- Specifies the height of the Remote Desktop window.


/public -- Runs Remote Desktop in public mode.


/span -- Matches the remote desktop width and height with the local virtual desktop, spanning across multiple monitors if necessary. To span across monitors, the monitors must all have the same height and be aligned vertically.


/edit -- Opens the specified .rdp connection file for editing.


/migrate -- Migrates legacy connection files that were created with Client Connection Manager to new .rdp connection files.




1 comment:

Paul Rogan said...

I found microsoft's remote desktop software to be lacking severely especially in vista so I switched to proxy, it's been well worth it.