Detecting the Remote Desktop Services environment

To optimize performance, it is good practice for applications to detect whether they are running in a Remote Desktop Services client session. For example, when an application is running on a remote session, it should eliminate unnecessary graphic effects, as described in Graphic Effects. If the user is running the application in a local environment, it is not as critical for the application to optimize its behavior.

The following example shows a function that returns TRUE if the application is running in a remote session and FALSE if the application is running on the console.

#include <windows.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "user32.lib")

BOOL IsRemoteSession(void)
{
   return GetSystemMetrics( SM_REMOTESESSION );
}

For more information, see Run-time Linking to Wtsapi32.dll.

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Build date: 3/7/2012