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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!

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

A week with Windows Vista

Monday 27th August 2007  

I have been using Vista on my new laptop for about a week now… and I hate it!!! There are so many annoying “features”, it crashes often and I really want to go back to XP!!!

Here are a few of my complaints about Vista:

1. Hard disk is constantly thrashing… What is it doing??? Just sits there with the light flashing and the drive ticking away.
2. Sidebar - I set it up how I want it, reboot because of “Updates”, reset to default, or gadgets are randomised
3. Explorer - I set the columns how I want: details view (filename, filesize, file type, modified date, attributes), select this as default for ALL folders, go to a new folder - columns change (filename, album, artist, rating, or camera, date taken etc…) even if the folder does not contain music or pictures. If I go back into the folder I set up, its now in thumbnail view.
4. Constantly asks my permission several times to do something - e.g. delete a file “Are you sure you want to delete New Folder” YES. “Windows needs your permission to continue” CONTINUE, You must execute this command as an administrator, JUST DELETE THE ******* FILE!!!!!!
5. Turn off account control (disables above point) and security center constantly reminds me that “Your computer is at risk”
6. Some games (ie the ones that I play) will not work on Vista

I have more annoyances than I can possibly go into here. I hate Vista.

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This post is filed under Windows Vista by Lonewolf at 11:32am

24 Hours with Windows Vista

Monday 20th August 2007  

I bought a new laptop the other day, an HP Pavilion tx1250 “Entertainment PC”. This is a fantastic piece of equipment, 12″ touchscreen display which can be flipped over to so it can be used as a Tablet PC, 160GB Hard Drive, multi format CD/DVD burner, AMD Turion 64 x2, Wireless, Bluetooth and loads of other features. But enough of the laptop, this is about Vista - the new operating system from Microsoft.

First impressions are that it is very nice looking, the Aero version has transparent “glass” windows which look very nice, 3D task switcher (alt-tab) which shows previews of the window. There is a lot of user interface improvements, and lots of changes which at first are either difficult to find, or have been renamed to something else, but once you do find them you think to yourself “oh yeah, that makes sense now!”. Other changes are so simple, and so effective, they become natural.

Going back to work on an XP machine, and it feels somehow… old and outdated.

I really wanted to hate Vista, with all the talk of driver incompatibility, spyware, privacy (or lack of), digital rights management issues in the press… but all I can say is that my first impressions are (unfortunately) quite good. I like it.

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This post is filed under Computers, Windows Vista by Lonewolf at 1:24pm