Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Windows 8.1 : VMConnect Issue and shortcut creation

I recently set up Hyper-V on Windows 8 and was happily using RDP to connect to my VMs to achieve full screen mode via a short-cut.

It wasn't until I was off my local network that I realised that I had been relying on my network router (to resolve the VM names) for Remote Desktop to work in this way. Double clicking on the VM in Hyper-V manager does indeed bring up the VM, but I ideally don't want to launch this first every time.

VMConnect is the tool that lets you access VMs.

At first I had a small issue when I ran VMConnect...



" You do not have the required permission to complete this task. Contact the administrator of the authorization policy for the computer ‘computername’ "

So I followed the advice on Joesph Turley's blog and added myself to the 'Hyper-V Administrators' group, restarted the machine and VMConnect could now see my VMs...


So, returning to my original problem, how do I quickly open a session to my Hyper-V VM without RDP?

The solution is to create a shortcut to VMConnect itself, passing the pc name and vm name as parameters. -

"C:\Windows\System32\vmconnect.exe"    myPCname    myVMname

I managed to make to launch into full screen mode, as the first time you connect you can select the resolution that it will reuse for future connections.



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