Powershell Remote Desktop Connection specifying user and password
How do you specify a user when using the mstsc command in powershell? While I can specify the server, I cannot specify a user.
Let's assume Server name = server01, User name = Test, Password = PW
Example 1 mstsc /v:server01 /user server01\test /password PW
This only brings up the "Remote Desktop Connection Usage" help menu.
Example 2 mstsc /v:server01
This works, bringing up the normal RDP connection prompt for User & password.
Example 3 mstsc /v:server01 /user server01\test
Even trying to just specify the user fails, bringing up the help menu again.
Some website articles on powershell suggest using "Connect-RDP" or "Connect-Mstsc" instead of just "mstsc" as per above examples, but this only brings up an error code. My knowledge of powershell is very basic, so I'm probably making a simple mistake somewhere.
53 Answers
From the "Remote Desktop Connection Usage" help menu, there is no switch like "/user" or "/password".
Please try
cmdkey /generic:"server01" /user:"test" /pass:"PW"
Then used mstsc /v:server01 to connect to the server.
2I want to note here that if your domain administrators have disabled caching of credentials none of the suggested answers will work.
3It has been said before, but I'd just like to add a fully working, batch-ready example that I use when I need to log in to so several user's accounts on a simple (i.e. the same password for all users) terminal server, e.g. when I need to make certain changes to each user's environment.
For %f in (user1 user2 user3) do cmdkey /add:TERMSRV/servername /user:domain\%f /pass:commonpassword & mstsc /v:servername & ping 127.0.0.1 & cmdkey /delete:TERMSRV/servername(replace "servername", "domain", "commonpassword" and the usernames in the for-loop as needed. You may need to open MSTSC once without parameters to set the default parameters as needed and then save the settings.)
