One of my personal flaws in choosing topics for posts is that I am hesitant to revisit apps. But sometimes it is essential to cover all of what some software is capable to do.
Sysinternals psexec (command line utility to launch remote processes) was stuck in such I-posted-about-that limbo, but I failed to cover one of the most important (of numerous) tricks it can do – launch remote console.
How to use
Essentially psexec launches its remote service on target computer and uses it to launch some process remotely. If process launched is command line utility as well then its input and output are connected to your console window.
The trick is to launch cmd as remote process, effectively creating remote console that you control locally. Simple version of command line is:
psexec \\hostname cmd
If remote service is established successfully (takes administrator access, etc) you get regular command prompt of fresh cmd window, except that anything you run in it will now be executed on remote computer.
Downsides
When connected to localized versions of Windows, output of native commands that were translated gets broken (encoding issues).
Overall
Easiest way I know to work with remote console. Takes little configuration (setting up administrator access) and needs no remote agents.
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