This morning I need to remote desktop to a server’s console session to do something. I haven’t used this option for quite a while. So like I always did, I type “mstsc /console” in my powershell command windows. But surprised me, it was not connecting to server’s console session. So I tried second time, it was still not working like before. Then I realized my OS has upgraded to Windows 2008 R2 from Windows 2003. So I ran “mstsc /?” to check if any changes on the remote desktop client. And it surprised me again. “/console” parameter is not there any more. It is changed to “/admin”. Even the description doesn’t say “console session”, but I think the “session for administering” may just refer to “console session”.

Following is the parameter and description of MSTSC under Windows Server 2003/ Windows XP

mstsc [] [/v:] [/console] [/f[ullscreen]] [/w:] [/h:] [/public] | [/span] [/edit “connection file”] [/migrate] [/?]

/console Connects you to the session logged on at the console of a server running Windows Server 2003 or a server on which the Terminal Server role service is installed.

and under Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008/Windows 2008 R2:

mstsc [] [/v:[:]] [/admin] [/f] [/w: /h:] [/public] [/span][/edit “connection file”] [/migrate] [/?]

/admin Connects you to a session for administering the server.

Here you can find a good reference about this command.