Lonewolf Online

Enable Remote Desktop Connections on Vista Home

Sunday 29th June 2008  

It is very annoying when a Microsoft product does not work, but something even more annoying is the fact that it does not work intentionally. This is the case with Remote Desktop on Windows Vista.

Remote Desktop Connections (RDC) are a tool provided in XP and later versions of Windows that allows a remote user to take control of another machine as if they were sat in front of it.

I have been using Remote Desktop Connections (RDC) for years between two XP computers (one Home and one Pro) they can connect to each other in either direction. Very useful because I have my main XP Pro machine in the home office, and a XP Home laptop connected through wireless. I can lye in bed with the laptop, sit in the garden, in the lounge or anywhere else, and access all my programs, documents and internet through RDC.

That was until I got Vista Home Premium and I found out that Microsoft has intentionally disabled this feature! Citing some security issues that “anybody can connect and take over a pc” they disabled incoming connections. Instead I have to setup a request, save it to a USB stick, go over to the other pc, load the invitation and connect. This must be done each time I want to connect. How annoying is that?

While I accept that it is a possible security risk (you do still have to know a username / password to connect) I would have preferred the option to allow incoming requests anyway. I am on a private network so why can’t I allow incoming connections???

The solution

Browsing the net I found a great solution to this problem on fransblog, a simple patch which allows full connectivity. Just download the zip file, extract and run a batch file as administrator. Job done, it now works perfectly first time.

Thank you Frans!

I am now (a little) happier!

This post is filed under Windows Vista by Lonewolf at 12:14pm

 

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