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I'm using two windows users on my HTPC at the same time. One is just for watching videos and one for administration via remote. This setup is quite ideal for me since windows can handle multiple concurrent logins and the win "rdp concurrent hack" (Google).

The problem is, I want both users to be logged in automatically when the pc was started. It shall be possible to watch tv and also the admin user shall be automatically logged in to start my scripts and other tasks, even if I haven't logged in via remote desktop manually. Later, when I want to admin my htpc I can just rdp connect the admin user without interrupting the video playback on the actual HTPC's screen and check my cleanup tasks, downloads, ... which already executed for this admin user.

But right now I found no solution to automatically login user A from a user B desktop and I also found no solution to autologin both users immediately at startup.

As a workaround I have to fire up my other notebook machine and login one time with the remote user via rdp. From this time on the remote admin user is running concurrent with the main user in the background of the machine.

The other workaround would be... after startup switch user from main user to admin user and then back again. But that also requires manual steps.

I'm on a Windows 8 System right now but all infos for Win7 or XP would be also interesting.

thanks a lot for all ideas.

PS: just to prevent useless posts... don't tell me that only one user can be logged in to windows. ;)

2 Answers 2

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If it was myself, I would just make sure any scripts are run by Task Scheduler, and just login when needed. With the terminal services hack, the session should be in the background and not interupt the main console.

I don't know any easy dual login option, I could only come up with this crazy solution:

  • User A auto logs on and runs a script:
  • MSTSC .RDP file ( 127.0.0.2 as user B )
  • SLEEP 20
  • TSDISCON 2

You would have to get the remote desktop to be automatic, I think you can do this by manually connecting once with 'save credentials' ticked, then saving the settings as a .RDP file to be used as a MSTSC command line parameter.

The session ID to disconnect should be consistant ( check with QUERY SESSION ) but would leave 'You have been disconnected' window in the background, so maybe script the window closing to disconnect with something like AutoIt.

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  • sir or madam... you are a genius! i was totally focused on native windows solution that i completely missed that I could login via rdp on the same physical pc. thanks a lot! your solution is fair enough for me. i will login to the remote user via rdp when the main user starts.
    – fpdragon
    Sep 25, 2012 at 6:53
  • I now tested this solution on my real win8 pc and found one problem. I am able to connect locally for the first time but when I save the password it won't work any more for the used ip. (Error message, something with user not allowed?!) I just took the next localhost ip (127.0.0.3) and I now enter the password "manually" with autohotkey. With not saving the password it works stable and the idea with putting the autohotkey script in the startup is perfect.
    – fpdragon
    Sep 26, 2012 at 7:25
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to round up the answer from WhoIsRich... (thanks again)

my new bat script which will be auto started when the main user logs in:

@echo off
echo Starting Remote Desktop App...
start /MIN Remote.rdp
echo.
echo Login Remote User...
echo.
echo Waiting...
@ping -n 10 localhost> nul
echo.
echo Killing Remote Desktop App
taskkill /IM mstsc.exe

the rdp file logs in to 127.0.0.2 with the remote user.

Edit 1:

This script seems to not work with Windows 8. If you save the Password for a local rdp connection it won't connect any more. I don't know why but mstsc throws an error. The solution is to use the next localhost ip (e.g. 127.0.0.3) and an autohotkey script instead of batch and type in the password "manually" from script. The rest is pretty similar to the bat script.

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  • If this is to add to his post, hit the edit button for his post and put this in there. It helps keep the noise down. Sep 25, 2012 at 11:56

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