Oh, the humanity! How I hate it when I get “The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections.”

Page Brooks and I were just talking about how it only happens to you when you are in a bit of a hurry, and need to get something done ASAP. You are allowed two remote terminal sessions.

The problem usually isn’t that there are too many people logged in. The problem is almost always that people disconnected from their without ending their session or logging out. So terminal services thinks the connection is still active, but just idle.

One option is to use the Computer Management Console, and choose Action, Connect to another computer…, Services and Applications, and then go to Terminal Services Manager and log off or disconnect the sessions.

I found out about a more powerful command line version that was able to work for me. I think the above didn’t work because our servers are virtualized.

1. run the following from a command prompt: query session /server:servername
2. Next run the following: reset session [ID] /server:servername

Ah, it just works. So much better now. Me and our servers are friends again.