I run MCM + utorrent on my primary HTPC in my living room. I use XBMC and run an external mysql database also for the rest of the computers in my house to just use a single library. I'm constantly needing to do little management things, looking for torrents, trying to figure out why an expected episode isn't present, etc. The problem is, everybody sitting in the room gets to sit and watch me fiddle around on the computer instead of watching TV.

So I had this brilliant idea to download the vmware player and crank up a VM just to run MCM and utorrent, etc, then I could just vnc into that machine without ever having to interrupt everybody else. I have a pretty powerful HTPC -- i5 2500k proc, 8gb ram, solid state hard drives, geforce gtx-470 video card... however the VM was insanely ridiculously slow... completely unusable. I found several performance tweaks but none of them really helped. It seemed very unstable and I quickly knew I had to get rid of it.

So I thought I would try to figure out a way to use some sort of terminal services to allow me to remotely connect to my htpc in a different session using different credentials. Turns out that's only available in Windows Server... remote desktop in Windows 7 only supports a single connection and it just takes control of the PC. There is a hack out there that replaces the terminal server dll file and allows multiple concurrent sessions over RDP, but people seem to have mixed results, plus your trusting that whoever wrote the dll didn't code a backdoor.

So then I tried several different solutions to attempt to create a virtual second monitor or extend the display from my htpc to my laptop, then use vnc to just work in the 2nd extended display, but none of the vnc viewers would let me access those extended parts of the screen.

Outside of installing a server version of windows, I think I'm running out of options. Obviously just having another pc set up and running all the time would be the best solution, but don't really have the budget for it right now.

Does anybody else do anything like this? Any other solutions that I might be missing?

Hi,

If you're running windows 7 go here

Concurrent Sessions

I can vouch for the multiterminal user hack for Windows 7. I use it myself and for the exact same reason: getting into the HTPC to manage Media Center Master and related functions.

Is the hack linked by fireblade the one you use, Pete? I've seen a few different versions of this hack and I've been a bit leary to use it.

I don't know, I downloaded it so long ago and use the one I downloaded any time I need it again.

I attached my copy, for your convenience.

I tried the one linked in this thread (Not Pete's) and it works perfectly well. I run XBMCBuntu so I don't need it to manage files on the media center. But the MCM machine is a separate one that I don't have exclusive access to anymore (Kids... ), this solves my access issues perfectly! Tried it on Windows 7 Ultimate 64.

Thanks all!

Don.

woohoo! So I didn't really want to do this and modify system dlls, but after multiple posts of you guys saying it works I jumped and it works perfect! I used this one:

http://compubyte.co.za/updates/Universa ... 090425.zip

Thanks guys!

One more question -- do you guys log in remotely with a separate account or the same one that is already logged in? I modified the fSingleSessionPerUser registry setting per this article:

http://remotedesktoprdp.com/force-singl ... s-per-user

but no luck. It would be nice to be able to log on to the same account simultaneously so I don't have to worry about managing different sets of settings under each user profile for all the various apps I'm running.

I use a separate account, myself.

Same here, separate accounts.