Remotely enable remote desktop.

Remote desktop is a great tool for administration of machines when you can't by physically present. One thing that comes from time to time is the need to connect to a machine that doesn't have remote desktop enabled. The steps are easy to enable remote desktop as long as you have administrative access to the machine.

First, launch regedit and select "File->Connect to remote computer". In the remote computer's registry tree, go to "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" and edit fDenyTSConnection from 1 to 0.

In some cases you will need a reboot to cause this change to be recognized. Issuing

shutdown -m \\machinename -r

at the command prompt is the easiest way to perform a remote restart.

That's it, unless a firewall is in your way.