XP Pro SP2 seems to support conncurrent use of XP via remote desktop and via console. (previously only a single session was possible on XP). If you run XP sp2 beta 1, you can enable it now, the setting taken from win2k3 enables it for WinXP Pro-SP2.
Windows XP SP2 Allows Concurrent Sessions
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Windows is becoming a seemingly more robust OS. All it needs now is a way to guarontee UI fluidity, like OS X has, durring
lots of system activity and a nice Bash like Terminal.
Apparently Longhorn will feature both a new kind of terminal and a hardware accelerated 2D/3D desktop like QExtreme. However, our topic here is the concurrent sessions on SP2.
I hope the security is up to snuff on this one… I’d hate to be hacked in the background without any inkling of what’s going on. I guess my Mac laptop would now be able to work on my XP Pro as I work on my XP Pro whilst doin’ some image editing et al in OS X… (sorry, I ain’t got Linux so I can’t take advantage of that…)
Jb
Before, logging in over terminal services logged out the user at the console, and killed the adsl connection, which killed the terminal services connection, which….
Does that means XP pro can now run as a server? (talking about systems connecting via console like Windows Terminal Server)
Pardon my candour, but isn’t this relatively basic?
I’ve always been able to concurrently log in using SSH on Linux/*nix or Cygwin… for many many years… and using X on Linux/*nix as well.
Why is this being applauded when it should be taken with a more ‘well, finally’ begrudging acceptence.
No no… this is most different. The pure innovation of the matter of having multiple users doing their own things at any given point at the same time is something new all together. Let me give you an example of what this means XP can do that other alternatives can’t…..
Ok I got nothing.
Yes, this is very basic — some people like to think it should be a necessity for an OS to be considered “multiuser.” So in light of those people, Windows XP finally becomes a true multi-user OS!
It can be done, but Microsoft sells Windows Terminal Server (name?) for that reason. Now, WinXP can do that, although limited so it wouldn’t canibalise the sales of the other Windows server edition.
As for Telnet/SSH, it is nothing like remote desktop. Remote console: yeah, like that’s any use on Windows XP.
SSH can be better than remote desktpo with a fast connection X-fowardeing becomes possible. It is possible to run apps straight over the Net with X of course the greater the latency the worse it runs, but that is true with both X-forwading and rdesktop.
RDP is pretty damn fast over connections such as cable and DSL. X is really slow over those links, and that’s with single applications while RDP is doing the whole desktop.
It’s kind of neat to do X redirects, but it’s way too slow for real world use over anything but 100BaseT ethernet.
Those who followed the CES coverege should have seen it coming. Concurrent sessions are crucial to the Media Center Extender initiative (the morphing of windows powered consumer pcs into home servers). Microsoft is simply setting the ground for the release of win xp mce 2005.
A co-worker who is a rabid Microsoft fan spent quite a bit of time and hot air telling me how wonderful Remote Desktop is a while back. How great it would be that we could help users remotely with problems and take care of issues that might come up without having to drive the 40 miles to one of our offices in another town. Sounded great, much like the ssh I am used to, that is until I found out the silly artificial limitation of one user at a time.
Because of Microsofts usual try and squeeze every dime out of the users approach, we would have to call the user, ask them to please log off the system (no no I don’t want you to shutdown, oh, you already did) ask them to hang loose for a little while until we then call them back (no, no, you don’t have to restart the system) and we are really sorry that you have customers backed up to the door but this is the only way we can access the system. (I know its not the only way to do this in Windows but refer back to the MS loving co-worker who happens to be IS director)
This concurrent feature is LONG overdue and should have been in there in the first place. If Microsoft was worried it would pull sales away from Terminal Server they should have at the very least allowed one administartor and one user as the limit from the very start of XP.
As usual Microsoft is too little and too late. Open Source has been there for years.
(I am quite aware that some of you may be offended by my post, too bad, its the truth)
I have sp2 v2055 and simply does’t work!
By the way it would be pretty dumb if Microsoft sold the terminal server thing and at the same time enables WinXP to do the same thing…
Here’s a clue: It is not about “being able to do it”, XP could do it from Day 1. The point here is that XP -albeit multiuser- is sold as a single license. Therefore, it should NOT allow more than one user *at a time* to get connected on the machine. This is what Win2k3 Server is about: more licenses, and so it allows concurrent connections.
The SP2 has this ability on XP obviously because of a “bug”, an ability that got slipped off to SP2, normally XP should not allow to do that because it is sold as a single user license.
>XP could do it from Day 1
I meant: “XP could technically do it from Day 1”
Well windows wasn’t designed to be trully multiuser from the beginning like the Unicies.
The Terminals services now in windows was technolgy primarily designed by Citrix which is fairly old. Winframe which was the NT 3.51 source modified to support multiple client connects was one of thier first products. Your still talking apples and oranges compairing running a remote GUI to running SSH CLI interface. Citrix ICA and even Terminal services is an extreamely fast way to run a remote GUI. Takes a hell of alot less bandwidth then remote X. In the smaller sense adding another terminal services connection just makes XP that much more useful.
So, what you’re saying is that this feature is actually a bug? 🙂
A “bug” ?
“a Microsoft representative confirmed to me this week that the concurrent sessions feature, called “multisessions” internally, is happening. The next XP Media Center Edition (MCE) version, due this fall, will use the feature to enable as many as five Media Center sessions to remote Windows Media Center Extender devices.”
http://www.winnetmag.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/4142…
The Terminals services now in windows was technolgy primarily designed by Citrix.
This statement just simply is not true. Teminal Services was not designed by Citrix. Citrix has always and road on top of terminal services.
Plus citrix may be faster then remote x but it is so unstable and there are so many issues with printing sometime response time is not always what matters.
Media Center Extender is *NOT* an RDP session. Video over RDP is unwatchable, especially full screen video. The Extender is purly going to access data and do all the decoding on the device itself.
This is one of the many features of SP2 that I like. This SP is starting to seem more like a new release more than a Service Pack. Security seems to work well and I have found no immediate crippling flaws. Nothing appears to be broken but I will continue testing. Im doing a full review for OSNews which should be available soon.
“Bobsled – a set top box that runs through WiFi or Wired and uses RDP to connect to a host MCE
Luge – Bobsled built into a TV (LCDs, portable devices etc)
Xsled – a piece of software that enables RDP on the Xbox, to turn your xbox (included with remote possibly) into Bobsled. Whether or not the Xbox will be allowed to connect to non MCE machines via RDP is unclear.”
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=16494&category=main
I’m sorry, this is the currect link:
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=16424&category=main&highlight…
“Here’s a clue: It is not about “being able to do it”, XP could do it from Day 1.”
Could you explain a bit more about what you mean here Eugenia? Are you saying this registry hack has always worked in XP? (I sure hope so because I will be adding it to all of our XP Pro boxes Monday)
“The point here is that XP -albeit multiuser- is sold as a single license. Therefore, it should NOT allow more than one user *at a time* to get connected on the machine. This is what Win2k3 Server is about: more licenses, and so it allows concurrent connections.”
I could understand that logic if we were talking about XP Home edition but XP Professional is sold as a business version and the ability to do at least a minimum of one user locally and one administrator through Remote Desktop would seem to me a given.
“The SP2 has this ability on XP obviously because of a “bug”, an ability that got slipped off to SP2, normally XP should not allow to do that because it is sold as a single user license.”
Well if its a bug its certainly one I will be taking advantage of. This is exactly the way the product should have been built in the first place since its sold at a higher cost to users and marketed as being “Professional”. I can understand that Microsoft did not want to compete with their Terminal Server offering but reasonable is reasonable. 2 users is not asking too much for a $300.00 per copy OS.
Microsoft recently announced that it was burrying it’s “Smart Display” effort:
http://news.com.com/2100-1046-5135679.html
I took a look at these devices last year and thought that the idea was interesting. I would be able to take this display into another room and use my desktop to browse or do other things without having to buy a full fledged laptop. Unfortunately, it turned out (as the article notes) that these things were to expensive. The other limitation was the one that they have now addressed with this service pack. It’s kind of ironic I think. They’ve fixed one of the major limitations of the “smart display,” but the device is now dead.
> Are you saying this registry hack has always worked in XP?
Read comment No #16, I don’t see how you read my first comment and not my second one. If you are going to reply, please read all comments.
Why not use Remote Assistance? It was designed for this type of scenario. The end-user doesn’t have to log out and you can remedy whatever problem they have.
@Anonymous:
Regular X isn’t great over an ultra-low bandwidth link. However, you don’t need 100mbps to use it. It works fine over the 802.11b link at home, and that’s only realistically about 4mbps. For ultra-low bandwidth links, have you tried NX? Its really spiffy — easily comparable to Citrix. It will be a standard part of the KDE Enterprise distribution, which should give it an edge over the costly Citrix and Windows Terminal Server competition.
@Anonymous:
Citrix is very powerful, and very stable. They used it at one place I worked, and it was really nifty to see Word working fluidly over an internet link. If you’re having problems, its probably a configuration issue.
Pre-empting the new sourceforge projects:
All hail the first person who breaks the 2 user limitation, enabling us to have a cheap Win TS.
(And no, I don’t want WinConnect.)
Perhaps Michael Robertson can chip in a bit of “enthusiasm”
>Why not use Remote Assistance?
Because some of the people posting here don’t know it does exist. Yes, that nice feature of Windows XP where you, home user, invite someone you trust to take a look at your computer remotely.
You can grant that person read-only access, or can allow to take control over your box. You can protect invitation with the password which is different from any user account you have.
Yes, you do not need to create new user with admin rights and a password to ask your friend help you, and you don’t need to share your root password too.
Remote Assistance covers 99.99% of all “please help me” cases. Fast Switching on Win XP covers 99.99% of all local multiuser scenarios where more than one person in household uses same computer.
Multiple remote sessions are must for 0.01% of people using Windows, and usually these people would rather use Linux. Now, Microsoft made them happy, too. Sort of.
When you are talking about the server, Win2003, then concurrent remote sessions are very useful tool. You have then since day one, 2 remote plus one local, no extra fee. If you need more than three persons administer Win2003 server simultaneously, then you have a bigger problem.
could you provide an URL on this stuff (NX)?
Microsoft Windows NT has always been a multi-user operating system. The ability for multiple users to start Windows desktop sessions over a network and run graphical applications was introduced with Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition. The technology goes back to WinFrame, an edition of Windows NT 3.5 that was enhanced by Citrix with this capability.
Multiple users can start remote graphical sessions on all Windows 2000 and 2003 Server operating systems. The number of users is limited only by resources and licensing. This is also the case with Windows XP, except that Microsoft made a licensing decision for client operating systems that only one user will be able to use a Windows desktop session at a time.
Many users can log on to Windows XP and maintain simultaneous sessions, but only one will be displayed at a time. It can be displayed at the console or on a remote terminal. The change that Microsoft is making is to augment the licensing on Windows XP so that two sessions can be simultaneously displayed. You can turn it on now if you have the Service Pack 2 beta installed. In the system registry, in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlTerminal ServerLicensing Core, create a new DWORD entry named EnableConcurrentSessions and set its value to 1.
As has been mentioned, Unix and Linux also support multiple, graphical, remote user sessions. The X Window System allows a graphical application to send its display to any terminal running an X Window server.
A notable difference in the capabilities of Windows and Unix in this area is in the protocols used to send the display to a remote terminal. The X Window protocol is inefficient and insecure when compared to the Microsoft RDP protocol. RDP provides better performance because it makes much better use of bandwidth and features secure authentication and encrypted data streams outside of WEP, VPN or SSH. There is a long list of other advantages, such as session shadowing, multi-server load balancing and access through a Web page Java or Active-X applet. RDP also allows the remote user, with a single connection over one protocol, to transparently print to his local printers, communicate through his local ports, access his local disks and hear sound locally when using a remote session.
Great post Azad.
http://www.nomachine.com
“I meant: “XP could technically do it from Day 1”
> Are you saying this registry hack has always worked in XP?
“Read comment No #16, I don’t see how you read my first comment and not my second one. If you are going to reply, please read all comments.”
Actually I did read #16. My questions to you remain unanswered.
Could you explain a bit more about what you mean here Eugenia?
and
Are you saying this registry hack has always worked in XP?
They were asked in a polite fashion and I did read #16.
Exactly how could XP before SP2 do this “technically”?
As I said earlier as soon as I know how its done I will be doing it.
Thanks
This statement just simply is not true. Teminal Services was not designed by Citrix. Citrix has always and road on top of terminal services.
Plus citrix may be faster then remote x but it is so unstable and there are so many issues with printing sometime response time is not always what matters.
Nice troll LOL Citrix is by far one of the most stable pieces of software ever written for Windows. I had very few issues with Citirx and even those were very minor(6 server metaframe cluster, 125 users) Citrix has not always run on top of windows with terminal services. RDP in NT 4.0 Terminal services edition is Microsofts answer to the unexpected demand that Citrix Winframe generated which Citrix licensed the source of NT 3.51 from microsoft to develop into a true multi user product(Read STAND ALONE PRODUCT). Winframe for its time was a awesome product. If i remember right there was some litigation between the two companies that settle what microsoft terminal services can and can’t be. Again compairing Citrix to X windows is apples and Oranges.
Citrix has many compatibility issues, but it supports x. X and Citrix are both very slow (until now citrix actually uses terminal service apis that MS wrote so its a bit faster.)
Citirx is extremely expensive and has big compatibilty issues with many traditional windows programs, MS terminal server works with almost ANYTHING.
WinNT was designed from the ground up for multi users.. the NT stands for network technology btw. Some parts were copied of unix other parts were invented. The amount of design flaws in NT is really comparable to those that are in Unix. Xwindows itself was an extremly bloated buggy dumb way to make a windowing system.. but yes it does work over the network.. just obscenely slow. There have been many performance hacks in linux over the years that were easily slotted into the NT architecture.. and a few vice versa.
Its all pretty even really.. cept X windows is dog slow and citrix is a rip off.
I’ve always been able to concurrently log in using SSH on Linux/*nix or Cygwin… for many many years… and using X on Linux/*nix as well.
Why is this being applauded when it should be taken with a more ‘well, finally’ begrudging acceptence.
For the same reason things like KDE get applauded and hyped by the Linux community while everyone else is going “well, finally”
. Different folks, different strokes…
Seems to me linux is 10 years ahead of windows
Well, considering most Linux distros still don’t come with decent fonts out of the box, I guess this is a matter of perspective.
It seems to me like Windows and Linux are becoming more like each other, as one’s strengths tend to be the others weaknesses.
“A notable difference in the capabilities of Windows and Unix in this area is in the protocols used to send the display to a remote terminal. The X Window protocol is inefficient and insecure when compared to the Microsoft RDP protocol.”
List the reasons why and show me some whitepapers from some real security analysts.
I’m willing to be a believer if you can prove it.
“RDP provides better performance because it makes much better use of bandwidth and features secure authentication and encrypted data streams outside of WEP, VPN or SSH.”
Feels the same to me. Both are dirt slow over a dialup modem too. What’s wrong with tunneling through SSH? Feels about the same speed to me.
“There is a long list of other advantages, such as session shadowing, multi-server load balancing and”
I don’t know what session shadowing is, but load balancing is old hat for Unix.
“access through a Web page Java or Active-X applet.”
Java applet access is doable. (I think Hummingbird makes an Active-X widget/thingy/doodad. Don’t remember for sure.)
“RDP also allows the remote user, with a single connection over one protocol, to transparently print to his local printers, communicate through his local ports, access his local disks and”
What’s the difference between one protocol and two protocols? I doubt the end-user can tell the difference anyways. That stuff works on dedicated X-terms, etc.
“hear sound locally when using a remote session.”
That’s standard for dedicated X-Windows terminals, etc.
Somehow, it feels like you’rea biased person with great love for MS products. I don’t think I can trust your judgement. I don’t know why that is… LOL
WinNT was designed from the ground up for multi users.. the NT stands for network technology btw.
What “NT” stands for depends on who you ask (“New Technology”, “IBM+1 = WNT”, something to do with an intel CPU – there’s lots). I’ve never heard the “Network Technology” one before though.
Some parts were copied of unix other parts were invented.
Nothing in NT is copied out of unix. They’re not at all alike in architecture or use.
The amount of design flaws in NT is really comparable to those that are in Unix.
Name some. Most of the things people call “design flaws” in NT are nothing more than poorly chosen default settings.
“IBM+1 = WNT”
Whoops, should be “VMS+1” (V->W, M->N, S->T), of course.
This was a cry from the remote-access crowd and all the vendors that were making those wireless tablet thingies…MS was too stupid up front to put a second terminal acces license in the box with their products! You could have the remote terminal on your coutch but nobody could actually use the computer while you were away…how stupid…So now they’re “fixing” it by adding it to the service pack. When the devices sold should have had it in the first place.
I was talking about smart displays…some one later pointed it out…WinXP by default didnt’ allow a smart display and a user to be on the computer at the same time…must have been hardwired into the kernel…from the start they should have sold this with the smart display devices…you had to pay enough for them anyway!
But their dead now…
You can also do Multisessions with RealVNC.
“Well, considering most Linux distros still don’t come with decent fonts out of the box, I guess this is a matter of perspective.”
What?! Wake up man!… Have you ever installed a fairly recent distro? They all come with AA enabled by default, and have, IMHO, a very good set of fonts. You can even use your m$ fonts if you like.
I know, this is off-topic, but so was Darius’s post.
Having used both VNC and TS/RDP on the same boxes, VNC copes far worse across a LAN or broadband internet connection than TS/RDP.
I actually can play a game (Championship Manager 03/04) installed on my W2k3 server box across the network in a terminal server session. On (Real)VNC that would not happen. It chokes on the bandwidth requirements somehow.
Plus you have the benefits of not having an active session that someone could notice/piggyback into by plugging in a monitor etc (for most people a minor benefit but given my experience one nonetheless)
[i]Citrix is very powerful, and very stable. They used it at one place I worked, and it was really nifty to see Word working fluidly over an internet link. If you’re having problems, its probably a configuration issue. [i]
No not a config problem…..word is a simple spp to use through citrix……try something more complex like a ERP package or something….you will then see the major issues with Citrix…..and printing is not stable….far from it.
Can somebody explain me the difference between “Concurrent Sessions” and “Switching between users without logging out” through the Taskswitch Powertoy? Because when I use it, I can also have several users having logged in.
Can somebody explain me the difference between “Concurrent Sessions” and “Switching between users without logging out” through the Taskswitch Powertoy? Because when I use it, I can also have several users having logged in.
“Concurrent sessions” in this context means more than one person interactively using the machine at once. So you might have one machine in a closet running software and displaying it on 3 different PCs around the house – 3 “concurrent sessions”.
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