Remote desktop connection: Authentication error has occurred (Code: 0x80004005)

Usually i connect to my other machine without any problems, one time suddenly i was receiving this error:

Authentication error has occurred (Code: 0x80004005)

And here is my experience with it, searching for it found this post saying that it could because of third party software or antivirus. Then i remembered that sometimes when i had fiddler open on my machine, i get authentication errors from outlook and some other clients that are unable to connect with the server on secure connections, i figured out that this could be the reason, that i have fiddler open in my machine and it is blocking the authentication.

So i needed to shut down fiddler on my remote machine, i remember that PsTools allows executing commands on remote machine, Then i found this article on steps to run PsKill to kill process on remote machine.

All i needed to do is:
- Download PsTools, then extract it
- Start command prompt in elevated mode (run as administrator)
- Go to PsTools extracted folder on run the command

pskill.exe \\MachineName -u username -p password Fiddler

Should take some time and come back with

Process Fiddler killed on MachineName

Trying to remote connect to my machine after that, worked as usual.

Enabling remote desktop on remote computer

I went home and forgot to enable remote desktop on my PC at my office, luckily i found couple of articles that is talking about enabling remote desktop remotely.

I followed the steps from  here and did a restart for the remote machine, but it didn't work, then i figured that since i did it through registry, firewall rules wasn't updated to allow it, while if i enabled remote desktop connections through the UI, it is updated automatically.

I found another article that has the same steps plus updating the firewall to enable remote desktop connections with a command line that is executed remotely. Another article for opening the firewall for remote desktop connections from command line.

The only thing that i have done extra is that i started the elevated command prompt for "psexec", the normal one didn't do the job.

Brief of the steps:
1- From the registry, connect to the remote computer
2- Change the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnections from 1 to 0
3- Restart the remote machine by shutdown -m \\MachineName -r
4- Update the firewall rules on the remote machine by downloading psexec and running the below from elevated command prompt
psexec \\remote_machine_name cmd
Then after it connects
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”remote desktop” new enable=Yes

Allowing concurrent user terminal sessions on windows 2008

We had a server running windows 2008, we were several persons working on the same machine at the same time, we all were using one user credentials. Each time one of us was connecting remotely to the server, it was disconnecting the other person who was working at that time, so only 1 session was allowed per user on the server

I was looking for the option to enable multiple sessions per user, doing some search, finally i found it

Click on start
Type "Remote desktop session host configuration" and hit enter
You will find an option on the screen that says "Restrict each user to a single session"

Double click that option, and uncheck this option and click OK

Then you will be able to connect several users remotely to windows 2008 using the same user credentials