Enable RDP via Registry

ServerRoom There may be times where a server is in a co-location and you forget to turn on Remote desktop on, there is a way to get RDP on a server just by making a change to the registry.  Either remotely connect to the server’s registry or make a batch script then will run when the server reboots.  As long as no firewall is enabled.

The registry key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnections

By default the key will be set to “1” which disables the RDP on the server, when you change the “1” to a “0”, you will have enabled RDP access on the server, then you only need reboot the server for the settings to work.  The easiest way is to placed the following command on your computer:

shutdown –r –m \\servername

NOTE: replace servername with the name of the server and you can even use –t 10 , to reboot the server in 10 seconds, which will cause the server to start it’s restart a couple seconds earlier.

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