transparently set up Windows 7 as remote workstation

Question

Maybe is a very basic question, but I can't find the exact terms to Google for it and find the concrete answer to my doubt.

Suppose we have several PCs in which individual employees work. One of them has an extremely powerful CPU, and it's very useful to use that computer to perform heavy computations, but go there and set up your task means its user has to stop working for a while.

Is it possible to allow a secondary user account to remotly log in, for example via Remote Desktop, and work with a full user environment, while the main user keeps working under his user session?

I've used remote desktop many times in the past, but it always blocked current user session, or even terminated it.

Lots of thanks in advance guys.

Answer 1

There is no official / approved way to do this.

Multi-user Remote Desktop (aka Terminal Services) is only supported on Server versions of Windows, and then only with the appropriate client access licensing.

There is, however, a 'hack' that will allow other users to log into a Windows 7 PC using remote desktop. I won't post the steps here, but there's a working version at the following site:

http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows_entertainment_and_connected_home/f/114/t/79427.aspx

Note: This is unsupported, may be broken by future updates, and is almost certainly in breach of your Microsoft license agreement, but it does work, and I happily use it at home on a Windows 7 Media Centre PC so that I am able to perform background changes without logging off/blocking the main MC user.