Powershell Log Off Remote Session

Question

I am trying to formulate a Powershell command to remotely log off a user. We have a terminal server with a very unstable program that sometimes locks sessions. We have to remotely log off a user but I'm trying to write a Powershell statement that will log off the person who ran the script. I Googled around, and found this command:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName MyServer -Command {shutdown -l}

However, the command returns "incorrect function." I can run other commands successfully in the brackets, such as Get-Process.

The idea is for me to put that into a script that users can run to log themselves off of the server (since when it locks, they cannot access the start menu or ALT+CTRL+END to do it through the GUI).

The flow would be this: Bob logs into MyServer via RDP but his session freezes. On his local desktop, he can run MyScript (containing a command similar to above) which will log off his session on MyServer.

Solution 1

Perhaps surprisingly you can logoff users with the logoff command.

C:\> logoff /?
Terminates a session.

LOGOFF [sessionname | sessionid] [/SERVER:servername] [/V] [/VM]

  sessionname         The name of the session.
  sessionid           The ID of the session.
  /SERVER:servername  Specifies the Remote Desktop server containing the user
                      session to log off (default is current).
  /V                  Displays information about the actions performed.
  /VM                 Logs off a session on server or within virtual machine.
                      The unique ID of the session needs to be specified.

The session ID can be determined with the qwinsta (query session) or quser (query user) commands (see here):

$server   = 'MyServer'
$username = $env:USERNAME

$session = ((quser /server:$server | ? { $_ -match $username }) -split ' +')[2]

logoff $session /server:$server

Solution 2

Here's a great scripted solution for logging people out remotely or locally. I'm using qwinsta to get session information and building an array out of the given output. This makes it really easy to iterate through each entry and log out only the actual users, and not the system or RDP listener itself which usually just throws an access denied error anyway.

$serverName = "Name of server here OR localhost"
$sessions = qwinsta /server $serverName| ?{ $_ -notmatch '^ SESSIONNAME' } | %{
$item = "" | Select "Active", "SessionName", "Username", "Id", "State", "Type", "Device"
$item.Active = $_.Substring(0,1) -match '>'
$item.SessionName = $_.Substring(1,18).Trim()
$item.Username = $_.Substring(19,20).Trim()
$item.Id = $_.Substring(39,9).Trim()
$item.State = $_.Substring(48,8).Trim()
$item.Type = $_.Substring(56,12).Trim()
$item.Device = $_.Substring(68).Trim()
$item
} 

foreach ($session in $sessions){
    if ($session.Username -ne "" -or $session.Username.Length -gt 1){
        logoff /server $serverName $session.Id
    }
}

In the first line of this script give $serverName the appropriate value or localhost if running locally. I use this script to kick users before an automated process attempts to move some folders around. Prevents "file in use" errors for me. Another note, this script will have to be ran as an administrator user otherwise you can get accessed denied trying to log someone out. Hope this helps!

Solution 3

Adding plain DOS commands, if someone is so inclined. Yes, this still works for Win 8 and Server 2008 + Server 2012.

Query session /server:Server100

Will return:

SESSIONNAME       USERNAME                 ID  STATE   TYPE        DEVICE
rdp-tcp#0         Bob                       3  Active  rdpwd
rdp-tcp#5         Jim                       9  Active  rdpwd
rdp-tcp                                 65536  Listen

And to log off a session, use:

Reset session 3 /server:Server100

Solution 4

This is oldschool and predates PowerShell, but I have used the qwinsta / rwinsta combo for YEARS to remotely log off stale RDP sessions. It's built in on at least Windows XP and forward (possibly earlier)

Determine the session ID:

qwinsta /SERVER:<NAME>

Remove the session in question:

rwinsta <SESSION_ID> /SERVER:<NAME>

Solution 5

You can use Invoke-RDUserLogoff

An example logging off Active Directory users of a specific Organizational Unit:

$users = Get-ADUser -filter * -SearchBase "ou=YOUR_OU_NAME,dc=contoso,dc=com"

Get-RDUserSession | where { $users.sAMAccountName -contains $_.UserName } | % { $_ | Invoke-RDUserLogoff -Force }

At the end of the pipe, if you try to use only foreach (%), it will log off only one user. But using this combination of foreach and pipe:

| % { $_ | command }

will work as expected.

Ps. Run as Adm.

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