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Console Behavior Differences in Longhorn Server Terminal Services

Wednesday, 29 November 2006 by Michel Roth

The Terminal Services Team has blogged about console behavior differences in Longhorn Server Terminal Services. This article describes a few behavioral differences between Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server Codenamed Longhorn in Remote Administration mode. Note that these changes will be available in Beta 3 and later builds.

Architectural change - Session 0 Special-ness
In Windows 2003, the session 0 is always associated with session on physical console. When user logs on to physical console or connects remotely using /console, she gets session 0.

In Longhorn, session 0 is not an interactive session anymore. It hosts only services. The first interactive user session is session 1, no matter whether user is logged on to physical console or connected remotely. The second interactive user session is 2 and so on. The session IDs are reused as users log off and previous sessions are terminated.

Reconnecting to session 0 from another session by any means, such as tscon.exe, is denied in longhorn server.

Reconnecting to your session on physical console
In Windows 2003, administrators typically use /console to reconnect remotely to their session on physical console. In Longhorn, /console switch is ignored in remote administration mode. The session obtained by connecting using /console is just like another remote session.

Reconnecting to your session on physical console (or any of your sessions for that matter) is driven by "Restrict user to one session" policy. This policy value can be set using tsconfig (under "Edit Terminal Server Settings" - "General" section). There is also a group policy for this which can be edited using gpedit.msc (navigate to Computer configuration - Administrative templates - Windows components - Terminal Services - Terminal Server - Connections).

Great article! Read the rest here.