When using RDP, sometimes the session may lock up and you may need to reboot your workstation remotely. This can be done using the “shutdown.exe” command from your local PC. First, make sure you can still ping your remote workstation from your local PC: if you can’t ping it – you can’t reboot it remotely. The following two commands will send your login credentials to the authentication server and initiate a reboot sequence on your remote workstation.

In the example below, the IP of your remote workstation is “192.168.200.21” and your Windows username is “USsmithj”:

net use 2.168.200.21 /u:USsmithj

At this point your should be prompted for your password. Once you are logged in, you can reboot your workstation:

shutdown -r -m 2.168.200.21

You can also reboot a remote Windows machine or restart a service from a Linux box. You will need to install the samba-common package to get the net command. The following example will force-reboot a remote Windows machine:

net rpc shutdown -rf --ipaddress ${ipaddr} --user ${user}%${passwd}

Use the following syntax to control system services on a remote Windows box:

net rpc --ipaddress ${ipaddr} --user ${user}%${passwd} service {stop|start} ${svcname}

You can get a list of enabled services using this command:

net rpc --ipaddress ${ipaddr} --user ${user}%${passwd} service list

Some of the other useful functionality of net:

net rpc audit Modify global audit settings
net rpc info Show basic info about a domain
net rpc join Join a domain
net rpc oldjoin Join a domain created in server manager
net rpc testjoin Test that a join is valid
net rpc user List/modify users
net rpc password Change a user password
net rpc group List/modify groups
net rpc share List/modify shares
net rpc file List open files
net rpc printer List/modify printers
net rpc changetrustpw Change trust account password
net rpc trustdom Modify domain trusts
net rpc abortshutdown Abort a remote shutdown
net rpc shutdown Shutdown a remote server
net rpc samdump Dump SAM data of remote NT PDC
net rpc vampire Sync a remote NT PDC’s data into local passdb
net rpc getsid Fetch the domain sid into local secrets.tdb
net rpc rights Manage privileges assigned to SID
net rpc service Start/stop/query remote services
net rpc registry Manage registry hives
net rpc shell Open interactive shell on remote server
net rpc trust Manage trusts
net rpc conf Configure a remote samba server