Restarting Windows 2003 Remotely via Command Line Interface
The convenience of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) in managing a Windows 2003 server remotely is sorely missed when it’s not available. But ocassionally unexpected things do happen.
I was informed one time that HTTP service is not working. Then making the situation worst was Remote Desktop Protocl (RDP) service is not working too on the server. I tried to Remote Desktop (RDP) connection, but was only disappointed as it does not work.
Windows services are down and GUI remote management is impossible. There’s no use for the server being up and running (as it can be reach by PING), but the essential services are down.
This led to exploring the solution of restarting the server remotely via command line interface (CLI).
I did find the appropriate CLI commands to work from Windows 10 desktop machine in restarting the Windows 2003 server remotely:
- Open as Administrator Command Line Interface window (not from Power Shell) in Windows 10
- Issue from command prompt connection to the remote server:
net use W: \\{ipaddress}\d$ /user:{username} {password} - Issue from command prompt shutdown/restart to remote server:
shutdown /r /c “RDP webservice hung up” /m \\{ipaddress} /t 0
Wait for the command to do its magic.
After sometime the Windows 2003 server restarted, then I crossed my fingers hoping that the all the essential services will be running fine.
Indeed I find joy, when the webserver (HTTP) and remote desktop (RDP) were working normally after server restart.
