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Remote Desktop Question

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by brian.mills

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I have a question regarding Remote Desktop on Windows XP Professional.

I recently installed XP Pro on an eMachines tower that I have at home and am trying to connect to it remotely. I've got Remote Desktop turned on automatically in the services and I can connect long enough to get the login screen. However, after logging in, the connection closes abruptly before bringing up the desktop. I think an error message pops up in the window, but it happens right as the window vanishes, so I don't even have a chance to see what it says.

Both the machine I'm connecting to and the machine I'm connecting from are running Windows XP Professional and are fully patched and updated.

I've never seen this happen before but I'm hoping someone else has and can help me. I'm completely baffled and rather frustrated with this right now.

8 replies

by sue t

did you look in the event viewer to see if there are any messages there? Does the computer you are trying to get on have a user account that is also on the other computer? Have you checked to make sure everything is set correctly in the Remote tab of system properties? Are you listed as a user in "Select Remote Users"?

by brian.mills

I checked Event Viewer, all the logs, and couldn't find anything about remote desktop. As far as I know I've set everything up correctly, and I've used every account on the remote box to try to log in, all of which should have permission to log in remotely.

It's been a week or two since I decided to leave it alone for a while, so I'll have to double-check everything tonight when I get home, but I'm pretty sure everything is set up correctly.

by churdoo

Also try to connect from the same LAN where your eMachines box is located. This could help isolate the problem.

If you say the connection closed as soon as you try to log in and the desktop will start to paint, the first that comes to mind is MTU and fragmented packets, so try from the same LAN and see if you can connect completely to determine if it's a host problem or some kind of IP problem.

Are you connecting through a VPN? What firewalls are you passing through? Have you tried to connect from different locations?

by brian.mills

I've been trying to connect from the same LAN. The computer I've been trying to connect from is using wireless and the eMachines is wired, so traffic is passing over the air from my laptop to my Linksys router and then through the wired segment of the LAN through a Netgear switch and then into the tower. Both machines have Windows built-in firewall, and the ports are open on the tower to let RDP traffic in. In part of my troubleshooting I completely disabled the firewall on the tower but with the same results.

I'd try connecting from a different computer, but these are the only two Windows machines in the house. Everything else is running Linux or OS-X.

I'm going to try pluggin the laptop into the same switch as the tower and see if that has any effect.

by brian.mills

I came home and tried connecting again, this time with both computers plugged directly into the same network switch, bypassing the possibility that it is a wireless nework issue.

I seem to be able to get remote desktop to work if I attempt to log into an adminstrative account that is currently already logged into the computer locally, thereby kicking the local user off. If no user is logged in, I get logged off before the icons and taskbar show up on the screen. This is a very baffling problem and I'm completely stumped as to how to solve it.

by ic-it

the name of the computer as well; for example computer name abcserver
abcserver\administrator
password

abcserver\username
password

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