Remote Desktop – From Maximized to Full Screen (Windows 7)

If you’re running Windows 7, and you’ve used the Remote Desktop Connection program (mstsc.exe), then you may have experienced the following: you start the program in Full Screen mode, then you go back to your computer at some point. But when you return to your Remote Desktop Connection session, it no longer goes to Full Screen — it just looks like a maximized window. With a few keystrokes, here’s how to remedy that with the Remote Desktop Window being in focus:

[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Pause Break]

If your computer doesn’t have a “Pause Break” key, then maybe it has “Pause” or “Break”; if no luck there, try [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F1] or [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F2]or [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F3] or … or [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F12] — one of them should hopefully work for you.

And if you have a laptop, you might have to use the Fn key to get Pause and Break: [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Fn]+[Pause]+[Break].

Before:

Remote Desktop Connection - Maximized

[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Pause Break]

After:

Remote Desktop Connection - Full Screen