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Scenario:

I am at work. I want to remote desktop into my machine at home. Problem is, my 5-year-old daughter is playing games on Starfall.com (or something similar) on her (non-admin) account. When I attempt to connect I see this message:

Another user is currently logged on to this computer. If you continue, this user has to disconnect from this computer. Do you want to continue?

I click Yes and then see

Please wait for 'UserName' to respond

This presents my daughter with an Allow/Disallow dialog on whether to let me connect. She clicks Disallow (or No or whatever it says) and then I see

'UserName' has denied your request

Question:

How can I force my account to log in and disconnect her session?

Additional Info:

My account is an administrator account. My daughter's account is a non-administrator account. Home machine is Windows 7 Pro with fast user switching enabled.

Note In my case, turning off fast user switching is not an option. Kyle pointed out in his answer that turning it off would allow the admin to force another user off. I'm accepting his answer and it identifies the issue, even though it doesn't solve my exact problem. I need to keep fast user switching's ability to change accounts without closing the previous account's session over being able to force myself to connect.

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Turn off fast user switching, it causes the prompt box to appear for the other user regardless of their group memberships.

EDIT: I could not find anything in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client (or HKCU) that will disable this behavior.

Additional Info: Here's an article from MS on the how RDP acts with and without Fast User Switching enabled, for various user scenarios. It's for XP, but the rules still apply.

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I'd prefer to keep fast user switching on as I don't want to log off existing sessions, e.g., if my wife is in the middle of something on her account and has unsaved work. If it's an either/or scenario, I'll stick with fast user switching over being able to force myself in. Question updated to reflect this clarification. – brett rogers Feb 22 '11 at 20:17
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Short of a hack there is nothing you can do... Good question though I hope someone has a work around.... – Kyle Feb 22 '11 at 20:34
As Kyle said: It's either disable Fast User Switching or apply an RDP hack to allow multiple concurrent sessions (which would technically violate your Windows 7 license agreement with MS). – techie007 Feb 22 '11 at 21:07
Even though this isn't the exact answer I was looking for (because it sounds like there is no answer for what I want given my context), I'm going to accept this answer because it identifies the issue. – brett rogers Feb 24 '11 at 19:23
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Glad I (and @techie007) could help out, sorry there isn't a fix for this... – Kyle Feb 24 '11 at 19:26
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up vote 2 down vote

Try the /admin switch:

Computer: brettbox /admin

(or, on Start - Run:

mstsc /v:brettbox /admin

)

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I didn't think about trying /admin... It didn't work with /console. I thought the two were the same? – Kyle Feb 22 '11 at 22:01
good thought, but already tried it - same result. – brett rogers Feb 22 '11 at 22:17
@Kyle - /admin is the new switch to use with the newer mstsc.exe (version 6+ I believe). /console was the switch for the older version. – brett rogers Feb 22 '11 at 22:18
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