RDP Admin fun with your Hackintosh

I do IT consulting for a living now-a-days and I use a MacBook Pro laptop as my weapon of choice for my mobile computing platform for a few reasons.

1. I have all the major Operating System flavors legally on one machine and at my finger tips, ie: Windows (in Bootcamp or VM Fusion), Mac and Unix (FreeBSD/Darwin), which is great when you're a road warrior.
2. It's the only version of Unix-like OSes that has Micro$oft Office coded for it natively, can you say "PowerPoint" boys and girls?
3. Let's be honest, they look damn cool and the Aqua GUI trumps windows, yes, even Vista, for sleekness and functionality.
4. Plus the chicks dig it ... lol

That being said there are a few little snurks that disturb the otherwise stillness of the pond of my Mac meditation. Two of those are the lack of a few keyboard keys and a right-click touchpad button that I use frequently while connected via RDP to a remote Windows server.

If you have ever used Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to a Windows server from your house in your undies, when you get a call at 2:00 AM from a frantic client about a critical service being down instead of having to hop into your clothes and drive 30 miles to their office, you'll understand it's incalculable value to you. I use it almost hourly, every day. (Man, I need to get a life.)

If you happen to want to lock the screen on that Windows server without having to log off or disconnect from the RDP session, then you are out of luck on a Mac laptop because you have no END key to perform the RDP version (CTRL+ALT+END) of the 3 finger salute (CTRL+ALT+DEL) to access the Windows Security dialog box so that you can lock the screen.

There is a way around this by creating a shortcut on the desktop of the Windows server you remotely connect to:

• Right click on any empty spot on the remote machine's desktop. Click on New and then Shortcut.
• In the dialog box that appears, type:

rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation

• Click Next to continue.
• Enter a name for the new shortcut, i.e. "RDP Screenlock" or whatever makes sense to you.
• Click Finish to complete the task.
• If you are feeling particularly Mac-ish you can go to properties and assign a pretty icon with a key or lock or something. ;)

The lack of a right-click touchpad button can be resolved by either CTRL+CLICK-ing whatever you want to right-click on or by purchasing a Mac-compatible 2-button USB mouse (I prefer the wireless ones, myself.)

NOTE: The best Remote Desktops Manager software for Mac is a program called CoRD. I highly recommend it for creating your quick-list of RDP connection links and storing the credentials for each connection. Awesome app.

Enjoy!