How to setup Remote Desktop on Windows XP

Posted on March 26, 2007 at 8:18 pm

Today is computer tip day! If you have never used Remote Desktop, it is a really great way to connect to another PC (office, home, etc) remotely and get work done that you otherwise could not get done. I routinely use remote desktop to connect to servers at our office, connect to user’s computers to provide tech support, and to connect to my personal computer at home to access files.

In order to use Remote Desktop, there are a couple of things you need to understand. First off, remote desktop only works with Windows XP and Windows 2003. What I mean by this is that you can only connect INTO a Window XP or 2003 machine. You can use a Windows 98, ME, or 2000 to connect INTO a Windows XP or 2003 machine, but you cannot connect INTO a 98, ME or 2000 machine remotely. If you want to be able to connect to a Windows 2000 or earlier machine, you’ll have to buy commerical software.

Secondly, you need to make sure that you are logged in as a computer administrator on the machine in order to set it up for remote access. If you brought a computer from a store or got it straight from the manufacturer, the first user name you create is always an Administrator account.

An easy way to check whether or not you are an Administraor is to go to Start, Control Panel and then click on User Accounts. You’ll see your user name and it should have “Administrators” or “Computer Administrator” written next to it.

Thirdly, the administrator account on your machine must have a password. If you do not have to type in a password in order to access Windows when you start up your computer, then you do not have a password set up and Remote Desktop will not work. Remote desktop does not allow you to connect to a computer with a user name that does not have a password.

When you go to User Accounts, you will see an option to create a password for the account. Go ahead and do that.

Next, if the computer you are connecting to is running Windows XP SP2 (which it most likely will be), then you need to open the firewall to allow remote desktop connections. To do this, go to Start, Control Panel, Windows Firewall and click on the Exceptions tab.

Make sure that the Remote Desktop checkbox is checked. Don’t worry about how my screen looks, it’s part of a corporate network. You should have a lot less entries and one of them should be Remote Desktop. Check it and then click OK.

The last thing that needs to be done in order for Remote Desktop to work correctly is to tell Windows that we want to allow users to connect. So far we’ve just fulfilled the requirements, but now we have to actually allow remote desktop connections to this computer.

Go to Start, Control Panel, and click on System. Click on the Remote tab and make sure that the “Allows users to connect remotely to this computer” is checked.

And that’s it! Your computer is now setup to connect to! First try connecting to the computer while on the same network…as in if you are at home, try connecting to the computer from another computer on your home network. In order to connect, go to the other computer and click on Start, All programs, Accessories, Communications, and Remote Desktop Connection.

In the dialog box, you can type in the IP address or the name of the computer. The best way to connect is to type in the IP address of the computer. In order to get the IP address of the computer you want to connect to, go to the computer and click on Start, Run and type in CMD.

In the black command window, type in the word “ipconfig” without the quotes as shown below and press Enter.

You’ll see your IP address listed along with some other info, but you don’t need to worry about that. Write down that IP address (192.x.x.x or something similar) and type that number exactly into the remote desktop text box on the other computer (the computer you are connecting from).

Click Connect and you should get a login screen pop up, which means you have successfully connected to the other computer. You can now enter the Computer Administrator user name and password.

If you get an error saying that computer cannot accept new connections, etc. that means something was not configured correctly. Remember you need to give the administrator account a password, open the port in the firewall, and check the allow remote connections checkbox in the System properties. All of these three things you need to do on the computer you want to connect TO.

Once you are able to connect from within the same network, now you can try to connect from the outside. So if you want to connect to your home computer from the office, you can do that, but you’ll have to do a few extra things.

First, you have to get your public IP Address (not the 192.168.x.x number) and you can do this by going to the computer you want to connect in to and navigating to the web site http://www.whatismyip.com/ and this will give you your public ip address. This is the address that can be used from anywhere in the world to connect to your specific location and is unique.

The second thing you have to do is open the port in your router (unless you’re connecting your cable modem directly into your computer) and forward that port to the computer you want to connect to. Here’s how you would do this on a Netgear router (as I have that) and is pretty much the same for other routers. Most manufacturer’s web sites have an article on how to configure their particular router for remote desktop since it’s very common.

You’ll need to log into your router by typing it’s IP address into the IE address bar. You can figure out the IP address of your router by going to any computer on your network (that you want to connect into) and opening the command prompt like we did above and typing ipconfig again. In addition to the IP Address field, you’ll also see Default Gateway, this is your router.

Type that address into your IE address bar as follows and press Enter:

You’ll most likely be prompted for a user name and password. Usually, you can find this in the documetation or on the under side of the router itself. For my Netgear router, the username as “admin” (lowercase) and the password was “password”.

Once you’re in, you should see an option called “Port Fowarding/Port Triggering” or something very similiar. I knew Netopia calls these “Pinholes” and on Linksys it might be called a “Service”.

Once you’re on the Port page, choose Port Triggering (if you see Remote Desktop in the list of services, you can choose that instead, but it may not be there). Now we’ll add the service for Remote Desktop. Click Add Service.

The next part may look hard, but it’s not really too bad once you understand what everything does. The service name can be anything, so type in “RemoteDesktop“. For the Service User, you can choose Any or Single Address. We want to choose single address because we want to connect into just one computer. Type in the IP address of your computer into the space provided. Again, that is what we already got earlier from the ipconfig command.

For the service type, choose TCP protocol. Now for “Triggering Port, Starting Port, and Ending Port” put in 3389. Port 3389 is the port Windows uses to connect using remote desktop.

Click Apply and you’re done! You should now be able to use your public IP address (type this into the “Computer” textbox in the Remote Desktop software) to connect through your router to your computer!

Please let me know if something is wrong or if it did not work for you! Thanks!

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» Filed Under Windows XP

17 Responses to “How to setup Remote Desktop on Windows XP”

Mallikarjun said on : September 13th, 2007 at 8:04 am

Sir,
I am very happy to say that I have succeeded to connect my Computer from other computer which is in my network.
But I am unable to connect my PC from outside of my network i.e., otherplace as Our computer is connected through two LAN Extenders to the router of other Centre. Please reslove my problem.
Thanking you sir,

Jitu gosai said on : September 25th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

this is my same porblem of Mallikarjun

William L.Fountain said on : October 3rd, 2007 at 5:49 am

Thanks for the info I will try it and will let you know how I do.

Daych said on : October 22nd, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Please teach me if i using norton secrity 2007, how was i setting on it when i want to use remote desktop! Thanks very much !

James Bouse said on : December 30th, 2007 at 6:24 pm

I am having problems with my client computer (home) connecting to my host (office). I am able to connect from one of my office’s computers to the other, following your instructions, but when I enter the IP address into Remote Desktop Connection screen from my home, it gives me a “Remote Desktop Disconnect” notice.
HELP!

Alan said on : February 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm

Am I able to connect to my computer at home if all I have at home are Modem and a switch? Thanks.

Nazrul said on : March 15th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

hey, how to setup remote desktop if the operating systems are different? Such as the server being XP and the client being Vista.

Alan said on : March 15th, 2008 at 11:29 pm

this is for Nazrul
as far as I know, it’s still the same
and if u still can’t get it to work, try adding the port number at the end of ur IP address so it should look like 192.168.x.xx:3389.
if u still have any question just post another comment and I’ll try my best to help u.

Rahul said on : March 19th, 2008 at 5:26 am

hi
I wanted to connect to my office PC but was not able to do so.But after reading yout artical i was able to DO. thanks for this artical. it is great. I am usinf the DynDNS to get the IP of my office
rahul

Mark Horton said on : March 29th, 2008 at 7:19 am

I can find the remote desktop Icon anywhere on my windows xp computer. It is not a new computer and it looks like it has been turned off. How do I turn it back on?

Govind Modi said on : May 1st, 2008 at 2:27 am

thanks a lot. Its realy works gr8. But I have one problem.
I am using Winxp Professional SP2. Both end Client & Server.. When i try to connect then server logoff and client connect to server. So i am not able to work from my server. I want to use both computer Server & Client at a same time. Pl guide me what to do in this case. If possible pl ans it to my mail also

thanks

bye

govind modi
india
surat

bluamaroo said on : May 3rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm

I tried to setup my home laptop as a terminal server and I already configured my router so that I can access my home laptop from work. I tried to enter the external IP in remote desktop at work and it shows me a username and password to enter. My question is what is this username and password? how can i set it up and cahnge it

akishore said on : May 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Govind, if I get you correctly, when you connect to your server from the client machine, you want to be able to use both machines at the same time right? You can actually just minimize the remote computer by clicking on the Minimize button in the remote session at the top.

You can also access the hard drives of the client machine while in the remote server by going to Options and then clicking on the Local Resources tab.

Bluamaroo, the username and password should be the administrator login for that machine you are trying to connect to. If you do not have a password configured on the machine, you need to setup a password for the Administrator account. You can do that by going to Control Panel and then clicking on User Accounts. Thanks!

Govind Modi said on : May 7th, 2008 at 11:13 pm

Thanks for your help. I think you are not getting my point. I want to say you as follow…..
I have 1 pc & 1 Laptop. ok . Now i want to connect my laptop to my pc by remote desktop. I am able to connect LAptop to my Pc. But at the same time my pc loged off and i can use my pc from my laptop as remote desktop only . But I also want to use my pc as stand alone pc. Someone told me that In XP i can’t use my server pc when it is connect by other remote desktop. Its possible in Win 2003 Server. Is it true ????? So pl guide me. what to do ?

Thanks
Bye

Govind Modi

Colin said on : May 11th, 2008 at 12:25 am

govind, to your question, for me ,
i think for one thing , you can try to use remote assitance to access your pc,(but what you have done on your pc is coordinate with the laptop’remote assitance program).so maybe this cannot achieve your point.
for another thing ,you should try for some utility ,e.g. VMWare or some other Virtual PC software…

How to figure out your public IP address Says:

[...] You can then use this IP address if you want to remote desktop into your home computer or office computer (might have to configure the router or firewall, which I explain in this post on how to setup remote desktop on Windows XP). [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
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