Netmeeting -- NO Remote Desktop Sharing

[Brad Doster]

RDS used to work, some time ago. I am trying previous restore points as I
write. The problem:

1) The "Remote Desktop Sharing" item is grayed out and cannot be selected.
2) If I manually start the Netmeeting RDS service, the NM icon appears in
the task bar. When I choose "Activate RDS", nothing happens -- checking the
menu a moment later still shows "Activate RDS" as an available option and
"Turn off RDS" remains grayed out.
3) All attempts to call this system result in "Waiting for a response..."
being displayed forever, or until canceled, whichever comes first.

My first system restore, going back to 12/01/05, just failed to fix the
problem. Other things I've tried:

A) Clean boot via msconfig with all Startup items disabled and all non-MS
services disabled.
B) Safe Mode (but the RDS service can't be run in safe mode)
C) Deleting the "Conferencing" registry key from HKCU and HKLM, then
rerunning the wizard.
D) Double-checked Group Policy settings (I even disabled "Disable RDS" for
good measure) and my own Admin rights to the PC.

Any other ideas short of reinstalling XP Pro are most welcome!

bd

PS -- this PC is running XP Pro SP1. I have another SP2 machine with very
similar symptoms. I'm hoping a solution to one will work for the other.

 

[Sooner Al [MVP]]

You might post to one of the NetMeeting specific news groups or try an
alternative like UltraVNC, which IMO is much better than RDS... Get the
UltraVNC server, client, XP video driver for the host/server and the
encryption plug-in from...

http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

If the PC you want to remotely access/control is behind a firewall open TCP
Port 5900... I also suggest you disable the rendering of the remote PCs
desktop wallpaper for better performance...

--

Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights...

 

[Brad Doster]

Thanks, Al. I'll be checking out UltraVNC as soon as I can. In the
meantime, it turns out that what I needed to do and what I was trying to get
working were 2 different things. For the lurkers...

I was trying to share my desktop with multiple computers at the same time.
I thought (apparently mistakenly) that this would be accomplished via the
Remote Desktop Sharing mode of NetMeeting. Turns out it is done with the
Sharing --> Desktop option once a meeting is hosted. The latter works fine
for what I need. RDS is still not working, but at present I have no need to
pursue it further, so I'm gonna let it be.