Command line RDP call CMD on target machine

Question

I need to remote into ~50 machines and run a batch file. Is there any way I can start up an RDP session and call cmd?

Answer 1

If you need to use RDP to access these machines, there are shells for mstsc.exe that allow command line auto-login and running a program upon connection. One that comes to mind is Remote Desktop Plus. You could use a batch script to log in to the given machines with the following syntax:

rdp /v:computer /u:username /p:password /start:"pathtoscript/script.bat"

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Answer 2

Windows Remote Shell is what you want;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd163506.aspx

Once setup, you can go WinRS -r:MYSERVER "cmd.exe" which will run cmd.exe on the remote machine and bring you a remoted console session locally. Alternatively, you could just run any other command directly on the box instead.

Actually, if you are need to use RDP (and I wouldn't bother just to run a batch file if I could avoid it) you could run a shell (or any other command) without a 3rd party program. Just run mstsc.exe, choose an alternate shell and save the RDP file.

The key settings you need are looking for are;

full address:s:yourserver.domain.com:3389
alternate shell:s:c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe