local security policy won't permit interactive logon

I have used quite a bit of Citrix (was even certified for that at one point) but hadn't ever used Microsoft's Terminal Server until recently. Certainly having a background in Citrix helped, but it didn't provide everything I needed to know.

Installation and licensing were relatively painlesss - just pay careful attention to the prompts, and it should go fine.

I had created a few test users, and populated their desktops with the program they needed. I had already tested with an administrative account, but ran into "local security policy won't permit interactive logon" when I tried the ordinary user accounts. This was surprising, as the user properties specifically included a "Terminal Services Profile" with a "Allow login to Terminal Server" box checked. I expected that would allow login, but it doesn't.

Researching the web, I found notes about Group Security Options, but although I found plenty of settings, none of them controlled this. Finally, I looked at the available Groups and noticed "Remote Desktop Users". Adding this to "Member of" in each users Properties allowed them to logon and use the server.

I found it amusing to contemplate Microsoft's "Ease of Use" here. You would think that you'd get a drop down list that you could choose Groups from when creating a user. Well, you can, but that's under the Advanced tab, which brings you to a confusing search window where it looks like most everything is greyed out. If you charge ahead on faith, you will get the list of groups you can pick from.

That's supposed to be easy? Sure it is..

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