I’m a fan of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop; it’s built into Windows and allows me to quickly and easily administer a remote box from the comfort of my own work station.I use it at my house to administer the headless servers on my home network, the Subtext build server, and the co-located VelocIT servers.
Gotta’ love that magic!
As a regular user of Remote Desktop sessions, you may have been confronted with the case to change your password. Control-Alt-Delete (CTRL-ALT-DEL) doesn’t allow you to change the password in the remote session, but instead gives you a menu on your actual host. Based on my understanding, local machine control-alt-delete key combination is control-alt-delete. Virtual PC's control-alt-delete key combination is Right Alt - Delete. Remote Destop session's control-alt-delete key combination is ctrl + alt + end. There should be no conflicts between them. Regards, Wilson Jia. Why use the CTRL+ALT+DELETE keyboard shortcut? Along with CTLR+C and CTRL+V for copy and paste, CTRL+ALT+DELETE is one of the first keyboard shortcuts a new Windows user learns. Back to the issue at hand. To change the Windows AD password in an RDP session on a Windows box, it’s CTRL – ALT – END. Within an RDP session on a Mac it’s: fn + Control + Option + Backspace. There you have it! Alternative options. When your Windows box is not part of a domain, you can change the password in the Windows settings menu below.
Today a co-worker asked me how to send the infamous Control + Alt + Delete keystroke combination to a machine he was working on via RDP.This is a pretty common keystroke to use when trying administer windows… it does have uses other than just killing the box.
With Virtual PC there is menu item to send the keystrokes on to the virtual box.Go to the Action menu and select the Ctrl + Alt + Del option.
And with Remote Desktop?
Well it’s not quite as obvious. Actually it’s not an obvious solution at all…It might not even be documented!?
For the record, since I already knew the answer I decided to be lazy and didn’t bother to search the tubes for any official documentation.
To send the Ctrl + Alt + Del keystroke combination via RDP you actually need to use…
Ctrl + Alt + End
Microsoft Remote Desktop Ctrl Alt Delete Password
Hmm… that sure is intuitive!