If you've ever got the following annoying message when trying to RDP to a remote server: "The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections. The system cannot log you on. Please try again or consult your system administrator" Then normally you've got to either ask another user to log off (not easy if its a remote server) or wait for them to. A little known trick is to use the following command line parameter when launching remote desktop: /console From the command prompt type: mstsc /console This will launch it in console mode, which in layman's terms me... [More]

The new service pack (SP1) for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 added some new functions to the COM API. There's too many to list, but the one i've found most useful allows you to return the guest machine's computer name as it appears on the network - very useful for automation scripts, or simply launching a Remote Desktop client (as i wanted). Unfortunately the documentation on it isn't great and it took me a while to find it when using C#, (thanks mainly to a few emails to/from Ben aka "Virtual PC Guy" http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy). It turns out you need to cast the GuestOS proper... [More]