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How to Enable Concurrent Sessions in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 RTM
Please Read
The script has been updated. The following now works properly:
- multi cmd line switch
- Home Premium
- Non-English Operating Systems, no need to change the script
Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
If you've been following MissingRemote for a while, you know one of our most popular series of guides is Enabling Concurrent Remote Desktop sessions. Continuing that trend we have an updated process below working with the RTM (Official Release to Manufacturing) version of Windows7 Ultimate, Professional, Home Premium and Enterprise Editions, x86 & x64 build 7601, Service Pack Build 1130.
One of the most popular articles ever at MissingRemote.com has been our guide on how to enable Concurrent Sessions for Windows Vista. For those unaware of what it is, enabling Concurrent Sessions allows you to Remote Desktop into a system that someone else is on, under a different user account, and access the system without kicking the user off. I, for example, use the feature to have MCE running on my Television, and then I remote into my main user account to access all my files without interrupting my MCE session. Special thanks to Mikinho for compiling the package below and making this all possible.
***DISCLAIMER***
The following files and instructions are provided to you at your OWN RISK!! Understand that it is replacing important files, and as always, anything can happen. That being said, if you do have a problem, we have a fantastic community here to help you
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS (READ CAREFULLY)
1. First, Download the file attached below (you will need to be registered and logged in.
2. Once downloaded, extract the files into a directory (for the purposes of this guide, it will be assumed that the files have been extracted to the folder C:\Win7RDP )
3. Open Windows Explorer to the above folder
4. Right Click on "install.cmd" and select "Run as Administrator"
5. Wait for the script to run entirely. At the end, you should see something similar to the below...
 |
| If you executed the command successfully, you should see this screen. |
EXTRA ABILITIES
For 99.9% of folks, the above steps will be exactly what they are looking for. However, if you want to customize the abilities a bit, there are certain command strings you can run in addition. To do so,you will need to open a Command Prompt with Administrator Privileges(Start > Run > CMD > Right Click "Run As Administrator"). The other available options are:
| -? | Show this help |
| help | Save as -? |
| multi | Enable multiple sessions per user |
| blank | Enable remote log on for user accounts that are not password protected |
For example, if you wanted to Enable multiple sessions per user, you would follow these steps:
1. Launch a Command Prompt with Administrator priveleges (Start > CMD > Right Click > Run as Administrator)
2. At the C:\Windows\System32 prompt type "cd\Win7RDP"
3. You should now be at the prompt C:\Win7RDP>
4. At the prompt, type: install multi
We hope you have enjoyed this guide from MissingRemote.com! If you have any questions, comments, concerns feel free to post in our forums link below.
Comments
It works for me, win 7 home premium.
Thank you!
Brilliant!
Back to pre SP1, worked first time on W7 Home Premium. Many thanks
Thanks a lot - works great on W7HPx86-SP1-DE
I can confirm that the latest script version works without any problems on both 32 an 64 - Swedish Win7 Home Premium! Ma
ny Thanks!
No bueno for me..... read the instructions.. did the deal ... But when I remote it signs out on the HTPC
All 64 bit ....DL'd SP1 installed, DL'd the patch installed on HTPC waited, installed multi and blank ... for kicks Dl'd and installed SP1 on my laptop...
When I log in from laptop everytime, it kicks the HTPC and I have to log back in, no concurrent... worked before SP1 ...
now Im not the most learned .. so am I doing something wrong?
What I want to do is concurrent sessions, shadow? this is how I'd like to have it work. Same session, not a different sign on.
Any thoughts
Thanks
Jeff
Hi Michael,
Do you know any reason this should not work on Server 2008 r2 sp1 enterprise?
I've checked rdpclip.exe and termsrv.dll and they are the same ones as in windows 7 sp1. I've looked briefly on the script and the only modification should be to add the value of "ServerEnterprise" to the EditionID string supported list.
My apologies for the newbie question, but I have run the script successfully --I think --I just don't know what to do next. I have no previous RDP experience, but my wife uses it for work.
Win7 Home Premium 64bit w/SP1
I am using the family computer as an HTPC. I was hoping this would solve the problems we encounter when one is watching the TV and another wants to use the computer. Am I in the right place?
If not should I undo the script? Is that possible?
Once you've run the script you should be able to go to a different computer on your network, run Remote Desktop Connection from Accessories in your start menu, give it the address of the computer you ran the script on and log in to it without disrupting the current console session on that computer.
Is that the functionality you were looking for? Your post makes it sound like you only have one computer. If that's true then this won't help you, unless maybe you're using RDP from a smart phone or some other device on your network.
Just an update for me, IT WORKS ! thanks, thanks a lot. SP1 initially broke it and my first attempt with version 1 didn't work but this version worked great on SP1 32 bit British.
Hi.
English x64 Home Premium here. The v2 patch worked great for me. Remote desktop is now functional again.
Thanks a ton for this.
Anybody else having problems with that drives from local computer not show up in "my computer" in the host - even when configured to do that in the client?
Host is Win 7 HP, SP1, swedish , patched for RDP . Client is XP Home and/or Pro. When doing remote the other way, win7 client to XP as host , local drives show up .
Any ideas?
Very nice to have RDP function back. Can live without the drives available - but it´s always a challenge to get it working.
@jrandeck -- You are correct sir! We do only have one computer. I misunderstood the purpose of this completely. I was thinking it would allow me to have 2 concurrent windows sessions on the same computer allowing one person to be on the computer and the other to be in the living room using Windows Media Center without interruption. I guess there is no solution for that except to get a dedicated HTPC, eh?
Should I "undo" the script? ...is that possible?
Thanks for your help!
@jrandeck -- You are correct sir! We do only have one computer. I misunderstood the purpose of this completely. I was thinking it would allow me to have 2 concurrent windows sessions on the same computer allowing one person to be on the computer and the other to be in the living room using Windows Media Center without interruption. I guess there is no solution for that except to get a dedicated HTPC, eh?
Should I "undo" the script? ...is that possible?
How are you using Media Center in the living room? If you're using an extender like an XBox 360 you should be able to continue to do that while someone else is using the computer, assuming there's available memory and CPU cycles etc. (Disclaimer: I've never used a Media Center extender, but that should work in theory.)
As undoing the script, I wouldn't bother with it. It shouldn't affect anything you're doing. I think the way to undo it would be to put the original DLL back, but I don't know if the script keeps a copy, I've never looked.
No extender...I'm running 35' of HDMI and USB for the IR remote. Media Center is viewed on the TV as a 2nd monitor.
No extender...I'm running 35' of HDMI and USB for the IR remote. Media Center is viewed on the TV as a 2nd monitor.
The concurrent sessions "hack" actually does let you use multiple sessions on the same computer. It still doesn't let you do what you want but I find it very useful for testing various users and permissions.
The "trick" is to either 1- create an alternate hostname via LMHOST, or 2- use a 127.0.0.x address other than 127.0.0.1. So you can use 127.0.0.2 and have a concurrent session on the same machine.
What it sounds like you want to do is use my CPANEL, Multimon or Maximizer to use Media Center in an emulated window full screen so you can have Media Center on a secondary monitor and use the mouse\keyboard on the primary screen.
Sounds like exactly what I want to do...also sounds a bit daunting. Maybe I'll look into these. I'm not familiar with LMHOST, CPANEL, Multimon or Maximizer. Thanks!
BTW - Did you mean Maxifier?
Michael, on #156, you write:
"What it sounds like you want to do is use my CPANEL, Multimon or Maximizer to use Media Center in an emulated window full screen so you can have Media Center on a secondary monitor and use the mouse\keyboard on the primary screen."
can you expand more on this? Have you written any articles or posts explaining this process in details? I have a similar setup to jeffbass2x.
I did mean Maxifier (I gave the auther code to make it work in W7). I am out of town this week for the Microsoft MVP Summit but when I'm back I'll setup a quick guide.
Does this hack enable remote desktop for windows 7 home premium?
Does this hack enable remote desktop for windows 7 home premium?
Thanks for your hard work Michael! This really makes adiministering the HTPC easier.
When I ran this yesterday right after upgrading my HTPC to SP1, it stalled near the end when checking to see if the service was listening. I got the first message showing it was listening at 0.0.0.0:3389, but then it just sat there and seemed to hang. I let it sit for several minutes, then I verified that I could connect to it from another computer, so I closed the window.
I'm assuming there was nothing important left at that point besides verifying that the service was working. Is that correct, or is there a reason to try this again and make sure it finishes?
FWIW, I had the older version working prior to installing SP1. This was on Win 7 Home Premium, 32 bit.
There is nothing important after that step so no worries.
MMMM.....it worked after a reboot... : )
Thanks a LOT for the info.
Jeffo.
Thx, works
(Win7 professional, US, 32bits)
I don't see any reason for it to not work with Win7 Home Basic but has anyone tried it yet?
Hi,
I'm running Windows 7 64bit Enterprise (english) now with SP1.
I was previously running the patch for RTM successfully but am having troubles with this one. I'm only intererested in running concurrent users, not multiple. But when logging in with a second user I still get "Another user is currently logged on...".
The patch seems to apply successfully. Termsrv.dll in Windows\System32\termsrv.dll is binary the same as the patched one. No warnings what so ever. Computer restarted several times.
What can be wrong?
I have the same problem.
w7 x64 enterprise (russian), not cracked .
sp1 was installed from a file Win2008R2.Win7-SP1-x64.exe v.6.1.7601.17514
I found the reason:
there is another file in the directory c:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-t..teconnectionmanager_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_ecc547376ae3a1a3\termsrv.dll(on other machines can be different)
it must be replaced too.
Very big tnxs for this patch!
Thank you this worked for me too! But I also had to run the takeown and icacls commands on the whole folder itself before I could write to it. Would never have guessed this file was actually used.
Win7 x64 ultimate.
Ran the script, did all that, still didn't work for me.
copied manually the patched termsrv.dll to the following 4 location:
C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\termsrv.dll
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-t..teconnectionmanager_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_ea94336f6df51e09\termsrv.dll
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-t..teconnectionmanager_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_ecc547376ae3a1a3\termsrv.dll
Still no dice.
Any advice?
Any feedback on what to do with Windows 7 (64 bit) SP1 v.721? I downloaded "W7-SP1-RTM-RDP-v2", tried to run "Install" but get a message that:
"Your operating system is not supported.
Only for Windows 7 Build 7601"
Help please!
Yep I can confirm that it's working on Win 7 64 bit SP1, Home Premium Norwegian.
So it was not Microsoft sabotage after all...
Thanks a lot, Michael.
I was getting really fed up with VNC.
BTW Michael, you could consider adding a check in the script to look up the configured RDP port number in registry. Then the listener check would also work in case you have edited the port. (Only nice to have feature, not really necessary of course).
Thanks again.
Works here on official SP1 - I had a frightening moment back there when everything vanished (and then I remembered I was running the script over RDP
)
Well done!
Thank you very much, it works fine.
xc0re
I like the "multi" feature which I wasn't using before. Prevents me from having to create a third non-admin user to RDP in as. Only problem is Media Center auto-starts when I log in. Anyone know the trick to prevent Media Center from auto-starting via RDP, but still auto-start on the console?
It is easy to do via a batchfile.
How are you currently lauching Media Center at startup? I'll write a batch for you or if you are familar just add the below to the begining of a batch file. It exits w/o doing anything if you are not running in the console session.
REM If we are not the Console session exit now
IF NOT "%SESSIONNAME%"=="Console" EXIT /B
REM Launch Media Center via Shell
It is easy to do via a batchfile.
How are you currently lauching Media Center at startup? I'll write a batch for you or if you are familar just add the below to the begining of a batch file. It exits w/o doing anything if you are not running in the console session.
IF NOT "%SESSIONNAME%"=="Console" EXIT /B
REM Launch Media Center via Shell
Thanks Mike! I figured there was a ttyname equivalent and just needed to know the magic. Now I feel dumb for not just looking at the environment variables. I just finished a complete reinstall and fastidiously documented every step for another blog post. Hopefully I'll finish it up this weekend.
On a completely random note, I just noticed the site's editor widget bypasses the Firefox built-in spell checker (which I heevily depend on
. Known problem?
Site bug #2: When quoting your post, I tried to edit it to a couple lines, and the preview would re-insert your quoted post again on top of my edited version. I supposed this could be intentional to stop folks from being misquoted, but it's the first time I've seen that.
I'll see if I can edit\update the WYSIWYG editor to fix both.
Confirmed working for me too. Thanks!
Thanks for the work, single session per user = 0 (multisession) works nice now on win7 x64 SP1
I am running WIN7 Home Premium SP1. When trying to RDP into this machine I get incorrect user name or password when trying to login.
My bad. I was using the wrong user name.
I had really big problems getting this to work, and it made no sense until I found that when I was using Open DNS rather than my IP prescibed DNS servers I couldn't us RDP. So it may be worth if you are having problems checking out:
"It's an issue of DNS taking/having priority over NetBIOS.
Look here: http://forums.opendns.com/search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Keywords=netbios&Type=Comments&btnSubmit=Search
Please let us know what measure could help you, if any.
Edit: Forgot to explain why OpenDNS is different here in comparison to other DNS services:
OpenDNS never returns NXDOMAIN, but comes back with guide.opendns.com, whereas other DNS services return NXDOMAIN, which causes NetBIOS to become active. This means, when using OpenDNS, you normally never come to the point, where NetBIOS becomes active. However, there are many ways to work it out, as you can see in the related threads. I also do not have a problem with this area in my Windows environment. "
I unzipped both SP0 and SP1 Win 7 Con to two folders within a main folder, labeled WIN7SP0CU and WIN7SP1CU. In my main folder, I have an installer .bat file. I pulled code from the install.cmd to find the current build (7600 and I think 7670? havent checked on SP1 machine), and Id like to simply switch between install.cmd files in either folder depending on the build. Q? How do I extract just the build number from:
CurrentBuild REG_SZ 7600
and do and if statement to switch
SET SOURCEFOLDER=%~dp0WIN7SP0CU\
SET SOURCEFOLDER=%~dp0WIN7SP1CU\
?
From there, I would just include an "install.cmd" line and my life would be great Thanks! (Complete newbie to bat/cmd programming)
So im running windows 7 home premium which does not have remote desktop by default, is there a way i can use the concurrent users feature for another program like RealVNC? Also, when i do this hack, does it enable remote desktop for my machene becuase when i did it nothing seemed to happen and there were no apparent changes.
very so much ,i need it ^^