It is assumed that you have a privileged account (read - domain admin) to be able to grant local admin privileges on servers. You will require psexec from sysinternals. C:\Windows\system32>psexec \\TestServer cmd PsExec v1.98 - Execute processes remotely Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Mark Russinovich Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Confirm we are connected to the correct server. C:\Windows\system32>hostname Testserver Now issue the command to grant local admin privileges and exit the server. C:\Windows\system32>net localgroup administrators corp\jeremy /add The command completed successfully. C:\Windows\system32>exit cmd exited on testserver with error code 0.