RDP has a lot of issues, one is how to get the users to use the right settings for the .RDP file they use to connect. In the past, I’ve downloaded the .rdp from RDWeb, edited it and distributed the file to end-users manually – via email or group policy to put it on their desktop, etc. That was getting old, so now, I have found a way to manage it via the Registry on the RDP connection broker.

One thing I’d like to mention before getting into the code is another registry entry : Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\CentralPublishedResources\PublishedFarms\{TheNameOfYourCollection}\RemoteDesktops\{YourRemoteDesktop} and the entry ShowInPortal – set that to 1 to show, 0 to hide (which 0 is the default).

Now, on to editing the RDPFileContents – oh, you saw that in the image above? Same location in the registry. This entry has the whole RDP file contents in it – new lines and all – that is downloaded from RDWeb links. Sure, you could (carefully) edit the line in the registry – but if you accidentally take out a new line between entries, you can’t put it back in! So, the better way to do it is to download the file from RDWeb, Edit with Notepad++ (or similar, I guess plain ole notepad would work as well).

You can now edit the file – I suggest Session bpp:i:24, redirectsmartcards:i:0 (This can clear up performance issues!), and drivestoredirect:s:C:\; (note the ; after) at a minimum. See the whole list of settings at Microsoft. ( Note the Remote Desktop Services column )

Once you have the settings down – and have tested using the file you just edited – you can use the following Powershell (edit the variables, of course…) Oh, you do need to run this on your RD Web Server, if it is separate from your Gateway, Connection Broker, Host, etc., to set the .rdp file configuration in your RDWeb registry. For RemoteApps, change the RemoteDesktops to RemoteApps in the registry path.

##Powershell to create a multi-line registry entry from a file
#_RDP registry location is : Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\CentralPublishedResources\PublishedFarms
##_Gather the Variable Information
#_The file to import the information from
$FileToImport = "\\Path\to\your\saved\RDP-Desktop.rdp"
#_Set the entry type - for RDPFileContents, this is String.
$RegType = "string"  # For New-ItemProperty, but not used in Set-ItemProperty
#_Set the path to the Key (Folder) level of registry.
$RegPath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Test\PublishedFarms\{YourRDPName}\RemoteDesktops\{YourRDPName}"
#_The Registry entry to Edit
$RegEntry = "RDPFileContents"
#_Import the file contents to a variable
$rContents = [system.string]::Join("`r`n",(Get-Content -Path $FileToImport))
# Assign the value
Set-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath -Name $RegEntry -Value $rContents -Force

Now your settings will be downloaded from RDWeb! No more distributing .rdp files with customized settings! With that set up and all user workstations set to not use UDP for RDP sessions, things should run smoothly!

I recently had a reason to need a solution to log off idle users from a workstation. “Group Policy!” was my first thought – but, no, the group policy idle logoff is only for Remote Desktop Sessions. Looking online, there were a lot of posts pointing this out – and decrying why Microsoft is so stupid as to not have this available. Its 2022 for crying out loud! I pieced together a script to log off idle users that actually works in a real company environment.

In my searching, however, I did find quser and powershell. You use quser, parse the output and log off idle users over an hour. Easy peasey, right? Nope. Not at all. For one thing, quser has some reality issues. ( I posted asking for help on sorting it out! )

The first thing about the quser output is how to properly put it in a good, powershell readable table. Some have suggested “convertfrom-string” – but that doesn’t handle the “Idle Time” and “Logon Time” very well, due to spaces.

The ‘original’ used :
Select-Object -Skip 1 | ForEach-Object {($_ -replace '\s{2,}', ',').Trim()} | ConvertFrom-Csv -Header $Header |

But that sometimes had issues as well, because if another user is logged on (switch user), the Session is empty, so you have a missing column and everything after ‘session’ gets shifted left by one.

Olaf (on the reality issues link above) helped me see how to use substring() to get what will work most, if not all, of the time. I haven’t seen an issue for it. I guess I may have been just too lazy to count it out. Either, way, it works.

The next thing is that “Idle Time” outputs a lot of different things – it can be ‘none’ or a ‘.’ or a measure of time ‘5’ minutes, ’14:54′ hours and minutes, or ‘1+13:33’ days plus hours and minutes. So, you have to, in a real-world situation, make allowances for such output and do your best to If/Then for all iterations.

The next thing is, that in Windows 10 and below, “Idle Time” doesn’t seem to actually be the individual user’s Idle Time. In testing, it seems more like ‘the time since any user last had a log on event.’
UserName SessionName ID State IdleTime
-------- ----------- -- ----- --------
bkearan console 1 Active 1+03:57
bktest 2 Disc 1+03:57

See how both users have the same ‘Idle Time?’ Even the Active user has an idle time. Now, in Windows 11, it appears to be closer to the user’s idle time (at least on my home, pc – my company laptop is 11, but has the same issue as 10) – but corporate environments haven’t all got to Windows 11. Some places still have Windows 7, but I digress. In Windows 10, you can’t use only idle time to log off a user – as it will log off an active user. … Yes, I got logged off as I was testing this theory. I clicked run in PowerShell ISE and got logged off immediately.

Now for the final kicker – a user is “Active” as long as they are the primary account logged on. Yep, the last logged on user NEVER goes to an Idle state. So far, I haven’t found a way around this last issue. However, if another user logs on after an hour – the Idle Time counter resets and the first user won’t be logged off for another hour.

I have the script set to run as a scheduled task on boot of the computers that need to log off users (so as not to get bogged down with multiple user sessions).

And I just added the Days as I was writing this. Just so much to parse! My Windows 11 laptop has been running the script for 3 days, 4 hours and 41 minutes – and I haven’t been near the laptop for two days, but my logged on user is still showing “Active.”

Then, I started looking for how to get the actual Idle time of the whole system. Now, I have added, as I write this, code to detect the time the system has not received any input whatsoever. So, here is the code that will log off ‘disconnected’ users and even the Console user if the whole system has been idle for over an hour: — and of course that doesn’t work. The Idle Console piece doesn’t get any input when tracking as the SYSTEM account – so logs off everything after an hour – even new logons. So I had to break it up into TWO scripts. The first script (below) is the one to run as a scheduled task on startup, run as SYSTEM.

#
# Complied from pieces of code and additions by Bobby Kearan with inspiration from
# https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/8r56tr/getting_idle_time_for_logged_on_domain_users/
# and Thanks to Olaf (https://forums.powershell.org/u/Olaf) for helping with parsing the output of quser properly


function Log-Message {
    param (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$Message
    )

    $currentSize = 0
    if (Test-Path $Logfile) {
        $currentSize = (Get-Item $Logfile).length/1MB
    }

    if ($currentSize -gt 10) {
        if (Test-Path $oldLogFile) {
            Remove-Item $oldLogFile -Force
        }
        Move-Item $Logfile $oldLogFile -Force
    }

    Add-Content -Path $Logfile -Value ("[" + (Get-Date) + "] " + $Message)
}

function Get-QUserInfo {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [Parameter()]
        [string[]]
        $ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME
    )

    begin
        {
        $Header = 'UserName','SessionName','ID','State','IdleTime','LogonTime'
        $No_Connection = '-- No Connection --'
        }

    process
        {
        foreach ($CN_Item in $ComputerName)
            {
            if (Test-Connection -ComputerName $CN_Item -Count 1 -Quiet)
                {
                $QuserOutput = quser /server:$CN_Item
                $QuserOutput -split "`n" | Select-Object -Skip 3
                $QuserOutput | Select-Object -Skip 1 |
                    ForEach-Object {
                    
						$IdleTime = $_.Substring(54, 11).trim()
						#Write-Host $IdleTime
						If (($IdleTime -eq 'none') -or ($IdleTime -eq '.') -or ($IdleTime -eq '$Null')) {
						$IdleTime = "Not Idle"
						}
						#Write-Host "Testing Idle Time " $IdleTime "for the + sign"
						IF ($IdleTime -like '*+*') {
                        $IdleTime = $IdleTime.replace("+",":")
                        #Write-Host $IdleTime " was the Plus sign replaced + ? "
						}
              
					If ($IdleTime -as [DateTime]) {
                        If ($IdleTime -match "\d\d\:\d\d"){
							#$IdleTime = [timespan]$IdleTime
							$Idleness = $IdleTime -split ":"
                        #Write-Host $Idleness.length
							If($Idleness.length -eq 2){
							$IdleTime = New-Object -TypeName PSObject
							$d = [ordered]@{Days=0;Hours=$Idleness[0];Minutes=$Idleness[1]}
							$IdleTime | Add-Member -NotePropertyMembers $d -TypeName Asset
							}
                        Else {
							$IdleTime = New-Object -TypeName PSObject
							$d = [ordered]@{Days=$Idleness[0];Hours=$Idleness[1];Minutes=$Idleness[2]}
							$IdleTime | Add-Member -NotePropertyMembers $d -TypeName Asset
							}
                        #Write-Host $Idleness[0] " = " $IdleTime.Hours
                        }
                        ELSE {
                          $IdleTime = New-TimeSpan -Start $IdleTime -End (Get-Date)
                          #Write-Host "IdleTime was a datetime-" $IdleTime
                          }
                       }
					   #Write-Host $IdleTime
						$final = $_.length - 65
						$Username = $_.Substring(1, 22).trim()
                    
						[PSCustomObject]@{
						UserName    = $_.Substring(1, 22).trim()
						SessionName = $_.Substring(23, 19).trim()
						ID          = $_.Substring(42, 3).trim()
						State       = $_.Substring(46, 8).trim()
						IdleTime    = $IdleTime
						LogonTime   = $_.Substring(65, $final).trim()
                        }
					}
                }
                else
                {
                [PSCustomObject]@{
                    ComputerName = $CN_Item
                    UserName = $No_Connection
                    SessionName = $No_Connection
                    ID = $No_Connection
                    State = $No_Connection
                    IdleTime = $No_Connection
                    LogonTime = $No_Connection
                    }                
                }
            } # end >> foreach ($CN_Item in $ComputerName)
        } # end >> process {}

    end {}

    } # end >> function Get-QUserInfo

    #$Info = Get-QUserInfo -ComputerName localhost

    $Logfile = "c:\scripts\LogOff.log"
    $oldLogFile = "c:\scripts\Logoff.old.log"
    #Initalize Log file
    Log-Message "Log Start: " + (Get-Date)
    

    $state = "Active"
    while ($state -eq "Active") {
    $Info = Get-QUserInfo -ComputerName LocalHost
    foreach ($user in $Info) {
        if ($user.State.Trim() -ne "Active" -and $user.IdleTime.Hours -ge 1) {
            logoff $user.ID
            Log-Message "$($user.State) User $($user.UserName) has been idle $($user.IdleTime.Days) Days $($user.IdleTime.Hours) hours, $($user.IdleTime.Minutes) Minutes - Logged On Time = $($user.IdleTime)"
        }
    }
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 260
    }

I did add a couple things after posting. That would be adding in self-cleaning Logging. Now, the second one, runs as a scheduled task as well, but on logon of any user, and it runs in the console session.

# Written by Bobby Kearan with inspiration and code from: 
# https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/8r56tr/getting_idle_time_for_logged_on_domain_users/
# and, finally, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15845508/get-idle-time-of-machine
#
Add-Type @'
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace PInvoke.Win32 {

    public static class UserInput {

        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError=false)]
        private static extern bool GetLastInputInfo(ref LASTINPUTINFO plii);

        [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
        private struct LASTINPUTINFO {
            public uint cbSize;
            public int dwTime;
        }

        public static DateTime LastInput {
            get {
                DateTime bootTime = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(-Environment.TickCount);
                DateTime lastInput = bootTime.AddMilliseconds(LastInputTicks);
                return lastInput;
            }
        }

        public static TimeSpan IdleTime {
            get {
                return DateTime.UtcNow.Subtract(LastInput);
            }
        }

        public static int LastInputTicks {
            get {
                LASTINPUTINFO lii = new LASTINPUTINFO();
                lii.cbSize = (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(LASTINPUTINFO));
                GetLastInputInfo(ref lii);
                return lii.dwTime;
            }
        }
    }
}
'@

function Log-Message {
    param (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$Message
    )

    $currentSize = 0
    if (Test-Path $Logfile) {
        $currentSize = (Get-Item $Logfile).length / 1MB
    }

    if ($currentSize -gt 5) {
        if (Test-Path $oldLogFile) {
            Remove-Item $oldLogFile -Force
        }
        Move-Item $Logfile $oldLogFile -Force
    }

    Add-Content -Path $Logfile -Value ("[" + (Get-Date) + "] " + $Message)
}

$Logfile = "c:\scripts\LogOff-console.log"
$oldLogFile = "c:\scripts\Logoff-console.old.log"

Log-Message "Log Start"

$state = "Active"

while ($state -eq "Active") {
    $idleTime = [PInvoke.Win32.UserInput]::IdleTime

    if ($idleTime.Hours -ge 1) {
        $sessionid = (Get-Process -PID $pid).SessionID
        Log-Message "$env:USERNAME has been idle for $($idleTime.Hours) hours and $($idleTime.Minutes) minutes."
        logoff $sessionid
    }

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 260
}

To assist with this, I wrote this powershell to create the scheduled tasks (mostly) – it launches task scheduler so you can check and verify.

# Check if the files are in C:\scripts
$scriptPath = "C:\scripts"
$files = @("Logoffonidle.ps1", "LogoffOnIdle_Console.ps1")

foreach ($file in $files) {
    if (-not (Test-Path "$scriptPath\$file")) {
        Write-Output "Error: $file is not present in $scriptPath"
        exit
    }
}


# Create or Update scheduled tasks
$TaskSettings = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -AllowStartIfOnBatteries -StartWhenAvailable -WakeToRun
$TaskSettings.ExecutionTimeLimit = 'PT0S'
$TaskSettings.Compatibility = 'win8'

$actionStartup = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" -Argument "-NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File $scriptPath\Logoffonidle.ps1"
$triggerStartup = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtStartup

$taskNameStartup = "LogOffOnIdleAtStartup"
if (Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName $taskNameStartup -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
    Set-ScheduledTask -TaskName $taskNameStartup -Action $actionStartup -Trigger $triggerStartup -Settings $TaskSettings
} else {
    Register-ScheduledTask -Action $actionStartup -Trigger $triggerStartup -TaskName $taskNameStartup -User "SYSTEM" -RunLevel Highest -Settings $TaskSettings
}

$actionIdle = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" -Argument "-WindowStyle Hidden -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File $scriptPath\LogoffOnIdle_Console.ps1"
$triggerIdle = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtLogOn

$taskNameIdle = "LogOffOnIdleWhenUserIdle"
$principalIdle = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal -UserId "NT AUTHORITY\INTERACTIVE" -RunLevel Limited
if (Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName $taskNameIdle -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
    Set-ScheduledTask -TaskName $taskNameIdle -Action $actionIdle -Trigger $triggerIdle -Principal $principalIdle -Settings $TaskSettings
} else {
    # Register for any user that logs on
    Register-ScheduledTask -Action $actionIdle -Trigger $triggerIdle -TaskName $taskNameIdle -Principal $principalIdle -Settings $TaskSettings
}

taskschd.msc

This should be working for both disconnected and console sessions now.

Run the script and make sure it creates both Scheduled Tasks.

Open the LogOffOnIdleAtStartup scheduled task and make sure it is set the Configure For: to the latest system there is available

Now open the LogOffOnIdleWhenUserIdle scheduled task and make sure it is set for: to the latest system there is – AND  the User is set to Interactive (or “NT AUTHORITY\INTERACTIVE”) and Run Only when user is logged on.

Edit each task to Uncheck the Stop the task if it runs more than 3 days.  We don’t want these tasks to stop.

Run task as soon as possible after scheduled start is missed.  Make the other show changes as needed:

The script creates a log of every logoff event it does in c:\scripts\logoff.log

If you need to keep a system alive when important tasks are running, add to the top section of LogoffIdle:

# Important processes that should prevent logging off
$KeepAliveTasks = @("robocopy", "ping", "Syncing")

Then, adjust the While loop:

while ($state -eq "Active") {
    $idleTime = [PInvoke.Win32.UserInput]::IdleTime

    $importantProcessRunning = Get-Process | Where-Object {
        $_.Name -in $KeepAliveTasks -or 
        $KeepAliveTasks -contains $_.MainWindowTitle
    }

    if ($idleTime.Hours -ge 1 -and (-not $importantProcessRunning)) {
        Log-Message "User $muser has been idle for $($idleTime.Hours) hours and $($idleTime.Minutes) minutes. Attempting logoff."
        
        # Trying a direct PowerShell approach for logoff
        $sessionid = (Get-Process -PID $pid).SessionID
        logoff $sessionid
    }

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 260
}

Moving a client from Server 2008 to Server 2019 Domain Controller. Which means adding the 2019 server to the domain as a domain controller, promoting it, etc. But the first step is to do DFSRMig – migrate from FRS to DFSR for Active Directory.

DFSRMig – Run this on the old DC

1# To see what state DFS is in
DFSRMig /GetGlobalState

2# Start the migration to DFSR with
DFSRMig /SetGlobalState 1

3# To check on the migration progress
DFSRMig /GetMigrationState – This will take some time: Run this command until it is in a consistent state.

4# Next step is to Redirect
DFSRMig /SetGlobalState 2

5# When that process is complete (check using /GetMigrationState), move to 3
DFSRMig /SetGlobalState 3

The idea is to get to “Eliminated” state – so you can promote the 2019 server to a DC. Well, I found out that when you get it to “Eliminating” – just after running Set Global State 3 – you can go ahead and promote. However… the old DC might get stuck in eliminating.

Now, the interwebs have plenty of suggestions and those should work in most cases – not mine, but most. I was completely baffled… but was restarting the service and looking at event logs… and seeing “access denied” messages. Which was totally weird. I eventually put 7 and 10 together and got 42…

I opened ADSIEdit (as admin) and went to Domain Controllers, expanded those…

And clicked on the Domain Controller names that was there and went to security… at first, nothing looked off… but eventually, I saw that somebody(!!) had set a Deny on the EVERYONE group so that nobody could delete anything under there – including the NTFSR (NTFRS?) folders! So, of course, it couldn’t eliminate it – access was, in fact, denied. I removed the deny from a couple ‘delete’ permissions and stopped the DFSR service and started it again – Boom! Eliminated!