Log Out Local Admin Remotely

Question

It's Friday night, hooray!

Except that my colleague has left the local admin account logged in on a machine I need to access, and everyone (including me) is at home.

I have a user level account that can be used for remote desktop connections with this machine, but because the local admin account is logged in, whenever I attempt to connect to this machine I get automatically signed out with the message "Your Remote Desktop Services Session has ended. You were logged off of the remote computer. Your network administrator or another user may have ended your session."

I have the credentials to this local admin account but, being local, RDP connections are refused with "The system administrator has limited the computers you can log in with...". net use and the shutdown /m command also fails with either the user or admin credentials.

Is there anything I can do to remotely reboot this machine or log the local admin account out or do I need to wait until Monday?

Answer 1

If you were able to RDP into the server, there is the Task Manager > Users tab, where you can view everyone who is logged in, and even right-click and do a Disconnect or Log Off.

Without RDP access, you are somewhat stuck.

If you are able to SSH into the server and use the command line, there is the logoff command:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/logoff

(As you probably know, Windows does not have SSH enabled by default, and this would have to be installed and configured beforehand to be of any help.)