Windows 7 RDP hackery

Robert Hallock 5 Feb, 2009 at 11:36am ET Article published in Tech

Buried deep within the heart of Windows 7 is the ability to enable a concurrent session for remote desktop. This feature allows a user to connect to a second user account and desktop independent from the user currently at the machine. Users who share a machine might find this especially useful as one person can be at the keyboard while another goes about their business on a laptop in another room. The performance impact on the host PC is negligible, while the RDP client should expect a spit of lag.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, the boys over at Missing Remote have the goods to make ‘er happen.

Comments

5 Feb 2009 ~ 12:24pm MiracleManS Wow, this is amazing...wow.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 12:39pm Zuntar Neat, I'd never use it, but neat!
5 Feb 2009 ~ 12:44pm MiracleManS I can think of a thousand ways this could be useful in a business sense, or even in a sense at home.

We currently have 2 desktops (one as a normal desktop, one as a MC) and a laptop at the house. It'd be nice to have my girlfriend have the ability to run from the one desktop that holds all her school files and programs, from her laptop. It would allow me to use the primary desktop AND still have her be able to finish her work with minimal impact on me.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:25pm Garg This would be awesome.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:34pm Snarkasm While awesome, it's also kind of scary. It potentially means, depending on how it's implemented, that somebody could be RDPd into your machine without you ever knowing it. As it is now, it logs you out, which lets you yank the connectivity if you're paranoid. If this is enabled by default, transparent to the user, lets you use an admin account, or something along those lines, I can think of a few bad things that could arise.

Looking forward to seeing how it's implemented. Love the idea.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:36pm Thrax It already explains how it's implemented; it sets a blank RDP password. You can turn RDP connectivity on and off right in the system properties panel.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:38pm Snarkasm Apologies, not seeing that in the link.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:39pm MiracleManS That's not exactly what I'm reading Rob. It appears to me that you can set it up to allow blank passwords for user accounts, but doesn't strike me as the default.
5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:41pm Snarkasm I saw that you can configure it to allow RDP to accounts that don't have passwords. I guess I misunderstood and thought this might be released functionality eventually, not a third-party sort of patch.
6 Feb 2009 ~ 1:13am Komete That's it. Win7 is awesome. I'm ordering a spare hard drive to install the beta on.