Most days I’m connected to a client’s VPN working on a project and lately I’ve converted from using Remote Desktop (RD),
Terminals actually and highly recommended btw, to
psexec and
taskkill to get things done. Using psexec I start/stop CCService, run CCNET from the console, use SVN and build from the command line to name a few. The machine I connect to most of the time has a limited simultaneous RD users and occasionally I’m unable to get a connection so having an alternative is crucial. One caveat I ran into was
TortoiseProc.exe fails to terminate when run remotely with psexec and has to be killed manually and unfortunately the SVN command line tools are not installed, at least not yet. Occasionally, I use
remote.exe from the NT Resource Toolkit though I haven’t used that in quite awhile not to mention the EXE I have is from 1997, not that that makes it any less effective.
Do you do something similar? What utilities do you use?
[Update: Feb 23, 2009] I also use psloggedon which is useful to see who is using the machine. Additionally, it’s nice to be able to launch a console window on the remote machine as well like this (though as Bary notes below ssh is also an option):
psexec.exe \\machine -w d:\ cmd.exe