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wiki:os:microsoft:windows:tips:rdp

Enabling Remote Desktop...Remotely

This article was originally published on September 9, 2018.

I’ve been working on rebuilding my home Active Directory environment, as well as splitting our personal data from multimedia to separate file servers. After getting everything up and running in Windows Server 2016, I moved both servers into our server room (just a corner of the basement, but it sounds fancier).

Then I realized I forgot to enable RDP on one of the servers. Whoops.

I’m pretty lazy, and I’m about working smarter, not harder. Turns out it’s actually really easy to enable RDP on a machine if you have access to the domain.

I haven’t moved my main desktop to our new domain, but I did have RDP working on the other server in the new domain. All you need are two lines of PowerShell:

# Enable RDP via the registry of the remote server
Invoke-Command –Computername "Kakariko" –ScriptBlock {
     Set-ItemProperty 
     -Path "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server"
     -Name "fDenyTSConnections"
     –Value 0
}
# Enable firewall rule to allow RDP traffic to/from the remote server
Invoke-Command -ComputerName "Kakariko" -ScriptBlock {
     Enable-NetFirewallRule
     -DisplayGroup "Remote Desktop"
}

Obviously, you’ll want to put your own server name place of mine. RDP will immediately be available, and you can get on with doing all the things.