What is the Remote Control add-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in?

A. Microsoft has released an add-in for Active Directory Users and Computers that provides a new context-menu option to remotely control computers, as the figure shows. The Remote Desktop Connection software must be installed on the computer for this add-in to function. You can download the add-in from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a91d2e7-7594-4abb-8239-7a7eca6a6cb1&DisplayLang=en. Execute the downloaded file, click Yes to the warning that this is an "as is" software offering, and chose an extraction location. Run the rControl_Setup.exe image, select Install, and click Yes at the warning to run the setup only once per forest. You need to copy rControl.exe to the %systemroot%system32 folder of each machine that you want to have the Remote Control context option (including the machine from which you ran the installation process). This process enables the context menu item on every machine that has Active Directory Users and Computers installed, but it requires the rControl.exe image to function. Machines that don't have rControl will perform no action when the Remote Control context menu is selected.

By default, the remote connection will be full screen, but you can change this by modifying registry values, as the following excerpt from the readme file describes:

The Registry keys are:[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftrControlAD]"FullScreen"="1""ConnectToConsole"="0""Width"="0""Height"="0""UseCustomPortNumber"="0""PortNumber"="3389"You can change the default values for your needs, as follows:"FullScreen"= when set to 1, the session opened by rControlAD will open in full screen.When set to 0, the session opened by rControlAD will use the "Height" and "Width" registry key values."ConnectToConsole"= When set to 1, the session opened by rControlAD will Connect to console (Session 0).Note: connecting to console session is supported only on Windows XP and above."Width"= When "FullScreen" is set to 0, this value will be used to determine the session window's width."Height"= When "FullScreen" is set to 0, this value will be used to determine the session window's height."UseCustomPortNumber"= when set to 1, rControl will read and use the Port Number specified at "PortNumber" registry value. The default is "UseCustomPortNumber"="0", so the default Remote Desktop port is used (3389).

Looking at the forestwide configuration partition, this process adds the context menu item by modifying the computer-Display displaySpecifiers object with an adminContextMenu value as the figure shows. I was just interested how it worked.