11/13/07

RDP and NetDom

RDP w/ console access is really cool. You can use it from the command line "mstsc /v:<server> /console". Of course your target PC must be enabled for remote connections and you can't use an account w/ a blank password. In fact, to connect to the console, you must login w/ the same account that is logged on at the console. Once you connect, the user at the console has their screen locked for the duration of the RDP session. If the console user unlocks the screen, the RDP session is terminated.

Practiced renaming a domain controller with instructions from petri.co.il The author said that it's undesirable, but didn't say why. Renaming a DC which also happens to be a certificate authority is a very bad idea (it invalidates your existing certificates and prevents new ones from being issued).

The steps:
- netdom computername <oldserverFQD> /add:<newserverFQD>
- netdom computername <oldserverFQD> /makeprimary:<newserverFQD>
- reboot
- netdom computername <newserverFQD> /remove:<oldserverFQD>
- I manually removed the old server name from DNS at this point.