Friday, February 24, 2006 

When Terminal Services Sessions Are Full

Terminal services is a great system for remotely connecting to Windows servers. Unfortunately you may sometimes find stale users who may be using up a connection (default 2 for administrative purposes) even though they aren't connected. When you try to log in, you'll get an error message, "The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections."

Traditionally this requires walking over to the console, logging in locally, and then bumping off the unused connections via Terminal Services Manager. However, using this preceding tip about console access via remote desktop saves you the trip. Very convenient when your server room isn't on the same floor as you or even offsite.