If you have never used concurrent remote desktop to support your Windows clients, this post is about to make your day! Concurrent remote desktop can allow you, as an admin, to interactively use a client OS while the main user is still actively logged in.

I’ve written about concurrent remote desktop before. The method that I used five years ago is completly different than the method that I prefer now.

Where the old version was a cumbersome and very OS version specific, this newer method is simple and scalable. With more than two million downloads, it also has a wide user base to provide some support. Today, we are going to deploy RDPWrapper in about ten minutes.

Start by downloading these two files:

• Grab the RDPWInst-v1.6.2.msi from here.
• Download the rdpwrap-master.zip from here.

Place the MSI on a network share and deploy it with Group Policy / SCCM / etc. As a general rule, do not deploy it to any computer where the primary user remotes in as it can lead to some strange session issues. For example, I deploy this MSI to my student and teacher machines, but I do not deploy it to IT computers. If you have used an alternative CRDP method in the past, you will want to ensure that the original termsrv.dll file is restored to the computer.

Once the MSI is installed, you’ll see just two new files in \Program Files\RDP Wrapper\. RDPWrap.dll sits between terminal services and provides concurrent use abilities. RDPWrap.ini contains the instructions and support for each client OS.

If you scroll to the bottom of RDPwrap.ini, you will see that it does not have information for the latest Windows 10 versions. That information is stored in the rdpwrap-master.zip file that you downloaded earlier.

Open the rdwrap-master.zip file and navigate to the res subfolder. Copy the rdpwrap.ini from that folder to your network share. Deploy it to your clients to enable support for the latest Windows 10 versions. Personally, I use Group Policy File preferences to deploy the ini file.

Set the preference action to replace and use Item Level Targetting to ensure that the newer file replaces the default file. While you are in the common options tab, set the preference to just apply once.

When future Windows 10 client versions are released, just grab the updated INI file and deploy it. It really is that easy! To test RDPWrapper, reboot the client machine and log on to that computer as a standard user. From your admin machine, launch a remote desktop session to that computer and you should be able to log on as well. If you open taskmgr, you should see that two users are actively logged in.

In the game Civilization, there is a quote that says, “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Just realign it.” At times, it might seem silly to go back and find another solution to the same problem. Those realigned solutions, such as using RDPWrapper, are simply so much better!