Powershell Log Off Remote Session

Question

I am trying to formulate a Powershell command to remotely log off a user. We have a terminal server with a very unstable program that sometimes locks sessions. We have to remotely log off a user but I'm trying to write a Powershell statement that will log off the person who ran the script. I Googled around, and found this command:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName MyServer -Command {shutdown -l}

However, the command returns "incorrect function." I can run other commands successfully in the brackets, such as Get-Process.

The idea is for me to put that into a script that users can run to log themselves off of the server (since when it locks, they cannot access the start menu or ALT+CTRL+END to do it through the GUI).

The flow would be this: Bob logs into MyServer via RDP but his session freezes. On his local desktop, he can run MyScript (containing a command similar to above) which will log off his session on MyServer.

Answer 1

Perhaps surprisingly you can logoff users with the logoff command.

C:\> logoff /? Terminates a session.  LOGOFF [sessionname | sessionid] [/SERVER:servername] [/V] [/VM]    sessionname         The name of the session.   sessionid           The ID of the session.   /SERVER:servername  Specifies the Remote Desktop server containing the user                       session to log off (default is current).   /V                  Displays information about the actions performed.   /VM                 Logs off a session on server or within virtual machine.                       The unique ID of the session needs to be specified.

The session ID can be determined with the qwinsta (query session) or quser (query user) commands (see here):

$server   = 'MyServer' $username = $env:USERNAME  $session = ((quser /server:$server | ? { $_ -match $username }) -split ' +')[2]  logoff $session /server:$server 

Answer 2

Adding plain DOS commands, if someone is so inclined. Yes, this still works for Win 8 and Server 2008 + Server 2012.

Query session /server:Server100

Will return:

SESSIONNAME       USERNAME                 ID  STATE   TYPE        DEVICE
rdp-tcp#0         Bob                       3  Active  rdpwd
rdp-tcp#5         Jim                       9  Active  rdpwd
rdp-tcp                                 65536  Listen

And to log off a session, use:

Reset session 3 /server:Server100