Reboot remote machine from RDC Session

15Aug/054

Reboot remote machine from RDC Session

Here’s a little tip I had to hunt for tonight. I use RDC on my iBook to connect to my XP Pro machine at home. Tonight I needed to reboot the remote machine, but all that would display was “Log off” or “Disconnect” in my start menu. For some reason, either because RDC disables it or the MS Apple RDC client disables it, I wasn’t able to send a ctrl-alt-del command either.

Drop to a command prompt (Start-Run- type “cmd” and hit enter) then type “shutdown -r -f.

-r restarts the computer
-f forces the issue. Otherwise the RDC client locks the workstation.

There are some other options too. Type “shutdown /?” to see them all.

That’s much easier than the WSH script I’d written a few years ago to get Windows NT to lock and/or shutdown.

Filed under: General Leave a comment

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ Jeff Atwood

No need to resort to scripting hacks– do CTRL+ALT+END, then use that menu to restart or reboot the machine.
Scott

hmmmmm, interesting. I’ll have to try that when I get home.
Ian

iisreset /reboot also works (remotely if you have permission)
Marty Thompson

Here’s a fun thing to use at work, if you have domain admin rights:

“shutdown -i”

Many co-workers of mine have gotten a shutdown message with 20 seconds to save their work.