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Scenario:

  1. Support is at work location.
  2. User is at home, connecting to work via VPN.

The support person then get's user's IP via logged in users on VPN. He uses Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the IP. He signs in as Administrator. The support gets prompted that a user is active. Continues. User is asked if he wants to allow remote connection and will be logged off. He accepts.

This is where things go wrong. Connection is set up through the VPN, but when the user signs off and lets the Administrator sign on, the user's VPN connection drops. The support's RDP session just times out because there is no longer a connection.

I have found one workaround which is letting the user connect through the VPN and where it confirms credentials there is an option to "Save credentials for 'Everyone using this computer'". However this requires admin privileges and the setting isn't even saved, so it would require me to pass them the Administrator credentials every support session. Which is something I'd rather not do.

Question:

How do I keep the VPN connection alive, preferably without admin privileges or how do I save the "Save credentials" setting?

How do I connect via Remote Desktop Connection without signing off current user? (I believe this would keep VPN connection alive anyway?)

Any help is much appreciated.

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  • Why not use something similar to team viewer? Also one could patch terminal services. However I feel as though your question is not home related and looks like a corporate use case - not On- Topic
    – albal
    Aug 12, 2015 at 10:31
  • @albal Teamviewer is being used right now, but has licensing cost. I also don't see how this is specifically related to corporate networks as I believe anyone using remote-desktop to a pc on VPN would run into this. If it is, I apologize and would like to hear where to address my issue to then. Aug 12, 2015 at 11:29
  • @Oh boy do I try, this is more of an IT infrastructure issue than your issue. Your IT department should find a way around this by either using other remote connections tools or providing you other means of connecting to VPN like a hardware VPN
    – clhy
    Aug 12, 2015 at 14:55
  • Unfortunately, enterprise hardware or software questions are off-topic here—please try Server Fault instead. See the help center for details. (Please don't cross-post—if you post your question there, you should delete the question here.)
    – bwDraco
    Aug 25, 2015 at 18:20

1 Answer 1

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Windows already has a built in feature for this. It's called "Windows Remote Assistance" and I use it with remotely connected staff all the time.

The remote person uses the "Windows Remote Assistance" tool which is built into windows and sends a request via e-mail. The support engineer receives an e-mail with a link and can establish a remote session, much like team viewer, to the remote PC.

See here for more details:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/get-help-windows-remote-assistance#1TC=windows-7

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  • Yes but then you have to log in as administrator via UAC with everything you do. Aug 12, 2015 at 14:42
  • sounds like what you really want is a managed services tool like Kaseya. That way you could remote, patch, change, etc all remotely. Aug 12, 2015 at 14:59

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