Since tsadmin and tsconfig have been removed how do you shadow/remote control a user session. Example: I have 27 terminal servers with 40 connections each. Before I could create a group, add the 27 servers and select the user to shadow/ control. It appears that Windows 8 server does not have this functionality at this time. My question would be will it have some kind of shadow/control function in the production release?

Remote assistance would not be an alternative. This would only allow one computer session at a time, provided I could find the user connection I was looking for (correct me if I am wrong in the way remote assistance works). In my example I would have 1080 users connected and no way to search for a session let alone shadow/control one .

I really do not understand considering a BETA is for testing most commonly used items of and application or OS. To leave out a primary function at this stage is unwise.I would have thought this would have been a priority considering the Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2 issues administraring a TS farm (tsadmin constant refresh with more than X number of servers/connections: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/563980a5-301d-45f6-be84-ebcc53a10ee2 ). So what you are saying, at this point in time, Windows Server 8 is either going to implement it at a later date, ignore the issue or if  MS cannot fix it they will leave it out of the production release?

• Marked as answer by NameIt123456789 Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:29 PM
• Unmarked as answer by NameIt123456789 Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:29 PM
• Edited by NameIt123456789 Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:32 PM

As you have already discovered, Shadowing of Remote Desktop sessions has been removed from Windows Server "8" Beta.  Remote Assistance can be used from within a Remote Desktop session but the user must give the invitation file and password to the expert.  Once the Remote Assistance session is established the expert can request control of the users session as well.

System Center Configuration Manager also offers remote control functionality, and there are several third party solutions.

Thanks for the response Don. Unfortunately remote assistance is not a solution. It will not work in a TSfarm due to security and restrictions any Administrator with common sense would implement in the cloud. Allow me to take it a step further with a real world scenario. I have 235 virtualized Windows 2008 R2 RD/Terminal servers deployed. I lock down the sessions to only 2 applications. My enterprise application and the printer control panel, shared by over 4000 users, at various locations throughout the country. I have disabled the shortcut keys to access Task Manager and the desk top. How are the users going to send me, the Administrator, a Remote Assistance invitation?

Further, if I have to multi-task and shadow/control multiple users at any given time, the time lost waiting on the user to send me, the Administrator, an invitation would not be economically feasible. Not to mention the time and money lost that it would take to educate the users on how to send an invitation.

• Edited by NameIt123456789 Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:48 PM
• Marked as answer by NameIt123456789 Wednesday, April 25, 2012 4:10 PM

NameIt,

It's clear that you don't understand that MS knows far better than you how you should be doing your job. Suck it up! MS wants flash, not usefulness.

Tom

Its weird that the group policy is there but I can't remote control a session. Is this feature gone?

I'm on the server release candidate and this is still an issue?

As stated earlier in the thread, the functionality has been removed from Windows Server 2012.  You can no longer shadow sessions with Remote Desktop.

Alternatives are Remote Assistance or SCCM, with SCCM targeting the Enterprise scenarios.

Im sorry but does anyone at MS actually listen to the customer base? How can you remove the one feature that makes RDS a truly enterprise solution. Should I now hire psychic's to fix my remote users problems, maybe we should train small mammals to ensure consoles are setup correctly before the users come in.

So MS takes Citrix technologies copies them and then removes the useful features, no wonder they are losing money.

Can someone point me to an alternative?

Thanks,

Phil.

I've kept up to date on the various blogs, etc about "what's new" in Server 2012.  Removal of this feature was never mentioned - I'd love to see a link though and am happy to be proven wrong.

I just checked the docs for Server 2012 as to what has been removed or deprecated.  This isn't mentioned there either.

I'm a big fan of Server 2012 - it's a shame this feature is gone when there's sooo much other good stuff there.

Our situation: We're an ISV with roughly 60 customers each of which has 15-25 users of our software.  Most customers have terminal services (10% 2003, 60% 2008, 30% 2008 R2) and we have remote access for maintenance & support.  If a user rings up we can connect in and then shadow their screen to help them out.

We have a TeamViewer Enterprise licence - I guess that's going to be our workaround for Server 2012 deployments when they start cropping up.  It's already our solution for desktop-based support and it works reasonably well in an RDP session - sometimes mouse clicks aren't handled correctly but otherwise it's pretty good.  The best part - no need to muck with firewalls, unlike what might've been required for remote assistance.  There's a $$$ cost but in terms of time saved it's been much easier than things like UltraVNC and CrossLoop which worked sporadically and/or required extra configuration at one or both ends.

Why on Earth would such a useful and well used feature be removed? This is going to cost me dearly in increased time for user support issues. If it wasn't for the improvement in RDP user experience regarding video / graphics this would be a deal breaker for us.

I noticed a problem at a client of ours where we were doing some remote support for users on their new thin clients - these happened to have dual screens, taking advantage of the dual screen support in 2008 R2.  Shadowing isn't supported for those users either - if you as the shadower, or the end-user as the shadowee, have dual screens enabled in your RDP session then shadowing just doesn't work.   (there's a KB article about it)

I suspect it may be either due to

a) licensing between MS and Citrix for this feature?; or

b) the intersection of supported technologies such as dual screen, USB redirection and published apps versus published desktops caused the shadowing to have a lot of edge cases making it increasingly difficult to support.

However, this is still a huge omission and a real shame :(  It would be nice to have a Raymond Chen-style blog post outlining what decision making lead to this outcome.  The dropping of this feature wasn't mentioned in any literature, formal or informal, ahead of time even though other features being dropped received a lot of attention.  Microsoft went to great pains to outline other features that are deprecated or have been removed from Server 2012 but this still isn't in the list!

It's also a feature that's heavily used and is without an elegant replacement.  It won't stop me upgrading for the time being, mainly because I have access to products like TeamViewer already.  There's a good market opportunity for someone to make a dedicated RDP remote control app and sell it for a few bucks per server :)

Just adding my voice to this thread.  Our use of Server 2012 will be limited until this is resolved.  Unfortunately, being on an agreement means we cannot withhold upgrade moneys as a political statement.  :(  

Enterprise customers deserve an official statement regarding this change, which is ironically missing from the Official list of Depreciated Features.  The honourable thing would be to make the official statement and deal with the Fall-Out, not making an abstract/ambiguous remarks concerning the '8 Beta' release in an obscure thread and ignoring the issue for political [read: face-saving] reasons... 

Microsoft:  Man-Up    give us an official statement as to why this critical feature was removed and update your list of Depreciated Features in Server 2012 to include the fact that RDP v8 removes the 'Shadow' feature...  Don't bury it in an article about Upgrading the RDP protocol on Windows 7 SP1 client machines.

Let your Enterprise customers (who pay your salaries) know whether SC2012 SP1 will allow remote control of Win8 machines...  (Keep in mind that that would double-pump the graphics across an already slow WAN We want local shadowing of the video port on the RDS server hosting the session)

FYI: I am reporting this post as 'Abuse' your attempt to knowingly supress this major change for political reasons is Abuse of your enterprise customers...

I've kept up to date on the various blogs, etc about "what's new" in Server 2012.  Removal of this feature was never mentioned - I'd love to see a link though and am happy to be proven wrong.

I just checked the docs for Server 2012 as to what has been removed or deprecated.  This isn't mentioned there e

Hi,

Microsoft announced at TechEd that Server 2012 R2 will have shadowing/remote control capability.  Please see this session video (will be available in 24-48hrs):

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/WCA-B350

And this page:

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/springboard/archive/2013/06/03/what-s-new-for-the-enterprise-in-windows-8-1.aspx

Thanks.

-TP

• Proposed as answer by TP []MVP Tuesday, June 04, 2013 5:49 AM

We had this problem too at the bank I work at. We have a bunch of tellers that login to five terminal servers. As it stood it was never fun trying to find their session. Now with 2012, you can't even shadow at all!

The solution that worked for us was intelliadmin. They have two different products that can shadow. The standard one lets you make a direct connection to the server and then pick it from a drop down list:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2013/05/a-windows-2012-rdp-shadowing-alternative/

The second one that we are testing right now will even allow you to just search for a name across all of your terminal servers:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2013/06/remote-support-without-the-monthly-fees/

These programs are nice, but it is still very annoying that now we have to purchase and evaluate another product since MS just decides to take away very important functionality.

I realize this is an old thread but wanted to put my two cents in and allow those that may come here to know there is a solution available today, that has helped me.

1. To use the TSADMIN files from Windows Server 2008/R2 platforms and copy them into the System32 of the Windows Server 2012/R2.  You can find the at this sites.

http://serverfault.com/questions/469980/using-tsconfig-tsadmin-in-windows-server-2012-locally

http://joshheffner.com/add-tsadmin-msc-back-to-windows-server-2012-r2/

And from what I gather from this MSDN event video presented by Adam Carter (about 16mins in) that it is available in R2; I have 2012 R2 and I do not see it there..  He was not specific but maybe he meant System Center 2012 R2?.

Hope this helps...