Terminal Services: Whoops! shutdown instead of logoff!

[tk421]

I've been doing remote administration for a number of my customers for the last couple of years, and I have come close a couple of times to inadvertently shutting down a system when I only meant to log off. Today it finally happened. I was logging off a company's file server after some maintenance, and in all my mad clicking, i must have chosen "restart" instead of "logoff."

My question is, now that i've been burnt, I want to see if i can make sure it doesn't happen again. Is there a way to inhibit me (administrator) from shutting down the machine remotely? or should i just be less of an idiot?

[NooNoo]

If you are administering a system remotely there will be times when you want to restart the machine. I say just be careful... once bitten

[silencio]

There is an option in group policy under user configuration/administrative templates/start menu & taskbar to "Disable and remove the Shut Down Command".

I'd make sure you pick the correct machines and users to apply this to though or you could wind up with a domain full of users who can't shut off their machines.

[darrenb]

Noo Noo's reply is the best advice. However, if you just can't control yourself - open up an mmc, add Group Policy. Expand User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu & Taskbar. On the right hand side you should see Disable and remove the shut down command. If you enable this you will lose the shut down option on the task bar. Then all you need to do is switch back to the desktop, right click on the task bar, click properties, select the advanced tab, and tick the box for display logoff. This will allow you the easy option to logoff and not make the mistake of shutting down the server.

Once this is done, if you need to retstart or shut down, go back into the group policy and change disable and remove the shutdown command to not configured.

This will then allow you top shut down as you please.

N.B. When you close out of the mmc, try to save it somewhere accessible, like the desktop, then you can easily switch between being able to shutdown or not.

Hope this helps.