After setting up my new Mac Mini based media center, I was slightly miffed by the fact that the brilliant CoRD app for the Mac (a fab remote desktop replacement) couldn’t connect.
A couple of weeks passed and I finally discovered that that app only works on PC’s set to enable less secure connections. It’s pretty obscure tip, but might help someone else out!
Here’s an update to the popular Remote desktop patch for Windows 7 desktop, this refines and builds on the functionality I first wrote about earlier in the year, with this built, gone is the command line UI and requirement to run scripts as an admin, now us use the nice UI to patch or unpatch your Windows desktop, enable multiple logins per users (useful for multi use systems such as Media Center boxes) and support for blank password logins (not something I would recommend personally).
You can pick up the latest patch app here via Media Fire and follow all the development over at The Green Button forums.
Here’s a great little open source and free application for anyone using the Microsoft remote desktop protocol to access Windows from the Mac, it’s called CoRD
I helped solve a pretty fundamental problem with the Microsoft mac client, when it just refused to connect to anything any more, but that alone would be doing a diservice to CoRD, as it’s also adds some great features that you may never have realised you needed.
The app comes with a nice little draw feature on the side of the UI, that makes managing multiple machines at once a simple matter, you can alternatively break them out into multiple windows if you have a large desktop, but for my 13inch screen it was very handy indeed.
The small screen size benefits also extend to supporting scaling, so you can ask for a large desktop which is scaled to fit in the available window space, and the desktop even resizes on the fly when switched into full screen mode, something both the Mac and Pc clients are badly missing.
Highly recommended.
Here’s a quick tip if you’ve ever needed to restart your media center or home server when connected over Microsoft Remote Desktop connection, it is possible by clicking on the desktop, then hitting control+f4 on the keyboard, the brings up the Shut Down Windows dialog, which offers you all the normal control including restart and shut down, not normally offered to remore desktop users via the start menu.
This is an excellent tip for media center users, who would prefer to administrate their pc’s remotely rather than direct, this enables users to quit a session and restore the account to the local account…
All you have to do is run a simple command that will log you off and return the system to it’s console. Create a shortcut on the desktop called End RDP and use this command as the target…
%windir%\System32\tscon.exe RDP-Tcp#0 /dest:console
A couple of things to remember. If you find it not working, check the user session that you are using on the RDP. Open Task Manager and check the users tab. See the session tab at the right? That number, in this case it’s 0, corresponds to the number in the command. RDP-Tcp#0
One thing to note, this tip doesn’t work the hack to enable remote desktop access in Windows 7 Home Premium as home premium doesn’t include tscon.exe, which is unfortunate but a small downside to a very handy hack.
via Home Server Show.