I have recently written an article on how to handle IDLE sessions in a VMware View environment. The title of the post was “VMware View – Disconnect, Logoff or Shutdown your VM when IDLE”. The post covered a simple method to monitor IDLE sessions based on mouse movements using a little free application available on the internet. As na action the little application would trigger system logoff.

Some people raised concern that a session disconnection method instead of logoff would be more useful and also allow the user to get back to the session on the same state. So, after a recent customer engagement I come up with a method to simply disconnect the session.

First, use the information provided in my first article on how to implement the IDLE monitoring solution and then utilise the the information bellow to kill the VMware View session.

If you wish only to disconnect the session and not logoff the user use the following command from from within the application of from a batch file: taskkill pcoip_server_win32.exe /F

This command will kill the PCoIP engine process and disconnect the session. However, the process is restarted once the user tries to logon to the desktop.

Aditionally, if you still wish to force the logoff and close applications even if the have unsaved data, on Windows 7 its possible to issue the following command from a batch file: shutdown /l /f

UPDATE 08/06

My colleague Jeff O’Connor (@cloudpimps) pinged me with yet another method to cease the PCoIP session. Thanks Jeff! Just use the following command from from within the application of from a batch file: tsdiscon.exe