Over the past few years, I have installed Windows Server on a handful of our development machines. Every time, I follow the same steps except it didn’t work to well this time.
Somewhere in the mix of releases and service packs, a major naming change occurred that I had no idea about. In previous versions, to enable remote desktop, I would just install terminal services which would run in administrative mode by default. This allowed 2 simultaneous connections from administrators which is what I needed.
When I installed terminal services this time, it ran for 120 days and then proceeded to stop accepting connections because it required a licensing server. It was obviously not running in administrative mode. What I soon realized was, terminal services in administration mode is now called remote desktop for administration. Instead of being part of terminal services, it is now separate which means it is installed differently.
To get it up and working, just follow this simple guide.