If you are physically seated at a computer, you can easily lock your workstation by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and selecting the Lock Workstation option. Alternatively you can also press the Windows Logo and “L.”

However, for those of you who use the remote administrator feature of Windows XP, you will soon discover that you cannot lock the workstation using either of these methods (for the obvious reasons of course). What you can do though is create a shortcut on the remote desktop. When you double click the shortcut, the remote computer will automatically be locked.

Here is what you have to do. Right click on the remote desktop, point to New and click Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, type in the following:

c:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation.

Click Next. Type in a name for the shortcut, such as Lock Workstation and click Finish. Now when you double click the shortcut, the remote computer will then go into a locked state.