I have a common server administration account shared by a group of users in a Terminal Services Administrative environment.
Sometimes when logging on and all sessions are full, we'll just get the "Maximum number of connections" error.
Other times, it will log the other user off, give them the "Another user has connected to your session" error, and let them in.
What are the conditions that decides whether the other user will get logged off vs. max # of connections error?
Best Answer
If there is a disconnected session and you supply the same credentials then Terminal Services will re-attach to that session. Otherwise it will attempt to start a new session. If there are no more connections available you will get the Max # of connections error.
There are settings in the Terminal Services Configuration Manager to define how long before an idle session is set to a disconnected state.
Since everyone logs on with the same credentials you could potentially punk one of the other admins by running Terminal Services Manager, right-clicking their session, and selecting Connect from the context menu. You would see what they were running and they would get the Another user connected to the remote computer, so your connection was lost. message.