Remote Desktop not working

[Yousuf Khan]

I got a couple of XP machines, one XP Pro, and the other Home. I am
attempting to remote control the Pro machine through the Home machine.
I've gotten this setup to work before, but for no apparent reason it has
stopped working. I can't think anything specific that would've caused this.

When I tried to telnet into port 3389 (RDP port) on the Pro machine, I
don't get any response. The firewall exceptions are all in place so it
should work.

Yousuf Khan

 

[JAMiE132]

Are the workstations on the same subnet?

have you tried disabling the firewall and the machine that you cannot telnet
to? Do you have more than one firewall on the affected workstation, such as
windows firewall and a third party firewall?


Regards,

 

[JAMiE132]

Oh and by the way have you checked that RDP is enabled? You can do this by
opening the system properties and selecting the remote tab.

open start menu, right click my computer,select properties, select remote tab.

I am sure you already know but Home edition does not support RDP connections
made to it; however you can establish an rdp connection from the home edition
PC




Regards,

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Are the workstations on the same subnet?
Yes.

have you tried disabling the firewall and the machine that you cannot telnet
to?

Yes, I did disable the Windows firewall, but it made no difference.

Do you have more than one firewall on the affected workstation, such as
windows firewall and a third party firewall?

No, just the windows firewall.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Oh and by the way have you checked that RDP is enabled? You can do this by
opening the system properties and selecting the remote tab.

open start menu, right click my computer,select properties, select remote tab.

Yup first thing I checked.

I am sure you already know but Home edition does not support RDP connections
made to it; however you can establish an rdp connection from the home edition
PC

Yup, that's why I'm only trying this from the Home client to the Pro server.

I also setup VNC on both these machines, just in case RDP went down, and
even VNC is not working anymore here. So I'm having to fix both of these
problems separately.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Brian]

I also setup VNC on both these machines, just in case RDP went down, and
even VNC is not working anymore here. So I'm having to fix both of these
problems separately.

That's definitely a clue that the problem is not RDP itself. If you have
already disabled the firewalls on both machines and it didn't help the
problem, check other connections points if you can. Since it sounds like
something is blocking access.

Basically, you are going to have to figure out which end is the problem.
Although this might not help if there is some sort of policy interfering
with remote desktop... Try using a third system as both the remote access
system to the Pro box and as a remote desktop host for the Home box. That
may help.

Brian

 

[JAMiE132]

Can you ping the workstations? Home to Pro - Pro to home

Disable firewalls on both machines

On each pc open the command prompt type in ipconfig /all

Make note of the ip addresses and default gateway

From the command prompt issue the ping command and attempt to ping the other
workstation and the default gateway.

example: ping 192.168.0.2

(Replace 192.168.0.2 with the ip address of your workstation)

Also what anti virus are you using on both machines? and are you using just
one type of any virus?


Let me know how you get on with the above

Regards,

 

[YKhan]

Can you ping the workstations? Home to Pro - Pro to home

Yes, both ways.

Disable firewalls on both machines

Now this is strange, when I turned the firewall off in both machines,
I got weird messages from the Security Centre. On the XP Pro machine
it reported that "Norton Internet Worm Protection reports that it is
currently turned off". Meanwhile on the XP Home laptop, it reports "%1
reports that it is currently turned off".

Now the desktop message is weird, because I had Norton SystemWorks
installed on the desktop years ago (2001 or earlier, I think), but I
don't think it ever included a firewall component. In addition, it's
been long since uninstalled, there shouldn't be anything Norton left
on it anymore. I'm using AVG now as my virus protection. The only
other firewall that I ever used was ZoneAlarm. It was only ever
installed on the desktop. But again, I had long since uninstalled it,
long before I setup RDP on this machine, and long before I had the
laptop.

The laptop message is weird, because why wouldn't it just say "Windows
Firewall" instead of "%1"? Obviously "%1" is a placeholder variable.

Also what anti virus are you using on both machines? and are you using just
one type of any virus?

AVG 8.5 in both.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

That's definitely a clue that the problem is not RDP itself. If you have
already disabled the firewalls on both machines and it didn't help the
problem, check other connections points if you can. Since it sounds like
something is blocking access.

Maybe, maybe not. The symptoms with the VNC problem are quite
different than with the RDP problem. In the VNC problem, I do get a
connection, I can see right upto the remote computer's login screen,
but then when I try to login to some accounts, I get disconnected. So
in the case of the VNC connection, it works partially, but the RDP
connection doesn't work at all.

Anyways, I won't go into too much details about the VNC problem, as
it's bound to confuse issues with the RDP problem. I've got access to
the Tight VNC mailing list, and I'll ask about the VNC problems in
there.

Basically, you are going to have to figure out which end is the problem.
Although this might not help if there is some sort of policy interfering
with remote desktop... Try using a third system as both the remote access
system to the Pro box and as a remote desktop host for the Home box. That
may help.

I can VNC into the XP Home laptop from the XP Pro desktop, without any
problems. I don't have the option to RDP into the laptop, obviously.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Brian]

Maybe, maybe not. The symptoms with the VNC problem are quite
different than with the RDP problem.

Okay, we'll leave that then. From your description it sounded like they
could be related.

I can VNC into the XP Home laptop from the XP Pro desktop, without any
problems. I don't have the option to RDP into the laptop, obviously.

What I wrote was probably confusing. What I mean is if you can, get a third
system with XP Pro. We'll call it "test", and you already have systems
"home" and "pro". If remoting home->test works, then the problem is pro. If
test->pro works, then the problem is home.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[Yousuf Khan]

What I wrote was probably confusing. What I mean is if you can, get a third
system with XP Pro. We'll call it "test", and you already have systems
"home" and "pro". If remoting home->test works, then the problem is pro. If
test->pro works, then the problem is home.

Well, I tried it on a third computer, and it was XP Pro this time, and
it didn't work as well.

Now, one question I might ask is, what should I expect to see when I
telnet into the 3389 port? Should I see a message like "Welcome to
Microsoft RDP" or something like that? Because currently all I see is a
blank screen and pressing any key exits from the telnet session.

Yousuf Khan