I have recently written an article on how to handle IDLE sessions in a VMware View environment. The title of the post was “VMware View – Disconnect, Logoff or Shutdown your VM when IDLE”. The post covered a simple method to monitor IDLE sessions based on mouse movements using a little free application available on the internet. As an action the little application would trigger system logoff.
Some people raised concern that a session disconnection method instead of logoff would be more useful and also allow the user to get back to the session on the same state. So, after a recent customer engagement I come up with a method to simply disconnect the session.
First, use the information provided in my first article on how to implement the IDLE monitoring solution and then utilise the the information bellow to kill the VMware View session.
If you wish only to disconnect the session and not logoff the user use the following command from from within the application of from a batch file: taskkill pcoip_server_win32.exe /F
This command will kill the PCoIP engine process and disconnect the session. However, the process is restarted once the user tries to logon to the desktop.
Additionally, if you still wish to force the logoff and close applications even if the have unsaved data, on Windows 7 its possible to issue the following command from a batch file: shutdown /l /f
UPDATE 08/06
My colleague Jeff O’Connor (@cloudpimps) pinged me with yet another method to cease the PCoIP session. Thanks Jeff! Just use the following command from from within the application of from a batch file: tsdiscon.exe
9 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
Adam Lange
08/19/2010 at 4:17 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
We are looking to do this exact thing, but instead of running PCoIP, we run the RDP protocol for VMview Client. Can I accomplish the same thing by killing a different process?
Andre Leibovici
08/19/2010 at 8:11 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@Adam Lange
RDP has a IDLE feature built into the protocol and that can be managed using standard Windows Group Policies. Please refer to Microsoft for managing group policies.
Simon Rowan
05/27/2011 at 6:38 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Looks like in VIew 4.6 the user no longer has rights to kill this process. ANy workaround for this?
Simon Rowan
05/27/2011 at 6:50 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
D’oh, tsdiscon still works!
O. Lee
02/14/2012 at 6:11 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@Andre
Idle Monitor doesnt seems to work when user locks screen. Is there a solution for that?
Andre Leibovici
02/17/2012 at 8:15 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@O. Lee
That it interesting… when I have some spare cycles I might work on a PS script to replace the Idle monitor tool.
Andre
DrewH
03/12/2012 at 2:59 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
How can I access the 1st article on how to implement the IDLE monitoring. It looks like the 872 and 912 articles are the same.
Andre Leibovici
03/14/2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@DrewH
You are correct. Something happened during a hosting provider migration ages ago.
Let me try to restore some data and see if I can get that article back.
Thanks for letting me know. In the meantime, you may Google for a tool could Idle Monitor. That is the free tool I am referring to in my article.
Regards,
Andre
mario
09/19/2012 at 5:03 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@O.Lee
you can take a look at autologoff from wizardsoft. Has enough options to keep you happy and managed through gpo… http://wizardsoft.nl/autologoff/autologoff.html