Reboot from remote desktop

Remote Desktop (mstsc.exe) is great: it allows me to access another remote machine as if I were sitting at its keyboard and seeing its screen.

My web server sits on top of a 7 foot tall bookcase but I have no need to touch it: I can use RD from other machines anywhere in the world.

It’s not obvious how to reboot the remote machine. The WinXP start menu Shut down option says “Disconnect” rather than “Shut down” and Ctrl-Alt-Del is intercepted by the local machine. (Windows Server 2003 has Disconnect as an option on the Shutdown menu.)

Here’s a simple way from within VFP (or similarly from VBScript or Jscript):

x=CREATEOBJECT("shell.application")

x.ShutdownWindows()

This brings up the Shutdown Windows dialog from which one can choose to Restart, Stand By, Shut Down, etc.

You can start RD simply from the VFP command window:

!/n mstsc

Or from the WinXP start menu:

Windows_Key+R mstsc