RDP remote control (shadowing) of multiple sessions is a great way to allow geographically separated teams to work on the same Server console.  You can do this from task manager

Control your co-workers!

Control your co-workers!

 

Today I had a new install of windows 2008 that was rejecting the attempts at remote control, the error was ”remote control failed”, nothing was logged in the System or Application event logs. In the Security event log was only one error: “The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a bind to a local port”

After plenty of fiddling and making sure there was no ”firewall” or reason for the filtering platform to be enabled, I came across this command I never knew existed “shadow”  

Apparently whatever had the filtering platform angry and blocking access was ok with that simple command.   So in this case going to a command window and running “shadow 3” worked perfectly, I could once again see both terminals and the windows filtering platform allowed me to actually work, instead of impeding me at every turn.

The Windows Filtering Platform on Server 2008 and 2008 R2 has been the culprit more times than I can count lately when the “gremlins” are inhabiting our servers, If only there were a way you could turn it off totally, but I guess that’s sort of like Internet Explorer, it cant be unbundled from the OS.