On a Windows Server 2008, can you even telnet into the server? (not remote desktop, but via the command line)
If yes, is there much control really?
How do people automate if you can't telnet? (assuming you can't)
Windows server and telnet, what can you do
telnetwindowswindows-server-2008
Related Solutions
I've had success with Sysinternals Process Explorer. With this, you can search to find what process(es) have a file open, and you can use it to close the handle(s) if you want. Of course, it is safer to close the whole process. Exercise caution and judgement.
To find a specific file, use the menu option Find->Find Handle or DLL... Type in part of the path to the file. The list of processes will appear below.
If you prefer command line, Sysinternals suite includes command line tool Handle, that lists open handles.
Examples
c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "e:\"(finds all files opened from drivee:\"c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "file-or-path-in-question"
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Best Answer
There is basically nothing you cannot configure using the command line in Windows these days. There's netsh to manage network interfaces and the firewall for instance, and appcmd to handle an IIS instance.
Using Powershell (which currently excludes Server Core) even more options are available like an Add-Computer cmdlet for joining a machine to the domain with additional options over the old netdom.
If you stumble upon something that cannot be done from the command line, there's bound to be a 3rd party tool to do it - or you could roll your own given the knowledge of what to actually poke at on the system (generally application-specific files or registry settings).
WinRM
Since Server 2008/Vista you have Windows Remote Management which is Microsofts implementation of the open web service standard WS-Management which uses SOAP and thus can be protected with TLS/SSL and a number of authentication options.
CMD and Powershell can invoke WinRM to execute stuff on remote machines so it's easily scriptable. As far as I recall, WinRM can be installed on XP and 2003 machines as well - and it can be used to manage other platforms which implements WS-Management, like Linux running OpenWSMan.
Telnet
Not enabled by default (not even the client, thankfully!) but can be if you want to.
3rd party tools
Seems one of the more popular options - tools like psexec or 3rd party SSH servers are all available if that floats your boat.
Management suits
Any decent management solution will let you handle thousands of Windows hosts with a few clicks in a comfortable client tool. Microsoft System Center series is probably the most well-known but the other big ones I hope someone can edit in here.
UI Tools for adhoc administration
Most if not all administrative tools you find on a Windows machine can connect remotely to another Windows host for ad-hoc management. If you install the RSAT features on a Vista or Windows 7 desktop you will get most of the standard UI tools to manage AD, infrastructure, replication, Hyper-V and so on with no need whatsoever to open an interactive session with the servers in question.
Interactive desktop
Using Remote Desktop you get an interactive session to the server which can be configured to be as secure as any SSH solution or whatnot. In my opinion, using Remote Desktop to a Windows Server is out-of-the-ordinary. If you must do that, then there's something wrong (and yes, things sometimes wrong so nothing wrong with that, pun not intended) that you're fixing while doing it.
UI tools and interactive desktop could be crudely automated using AutoIT or something similar - if you really want to push it into the absurd ^^