Remote desktop error

[dw]

We're trying to use Remote Desktop to connect to a WinXP Pro machine that
was upgraded from Win2K/SP4; however we keep getting this error,

Remote Desktop Disconnected The Client could not establish a connection to
the remote computer. The most likely causes for this error are: 1)Remote
connections might not be enabled at the remote computer. 2) The maximum
number of connections was exceeded at the remote computer. 3) A network
error occured while establishing the connection.

Here are some more details:
- Remote Desktop is enabled on the machine.
- The personal firewall has been turned off on the machine.
- We read in a newsgroup posting that we should try to run the following
from the command prompt on the machine, "telnet 254.254.254.254 3389" --
that fails on this machine.
- Pinging the machine is successful from other machines.
- We checked the one listing of "MSLicensing" in the machine's Window's
registry, and it was blank. Some newsgroup postings said that could cause
problems.

Help is appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

[Marc Reynolds [MSFT]]

What is in between the client and host? Since you cannot telent over TCP
port 3389 we know that something is blocking this traffic or the host is not
listening on TCP 3389.
On the host, open a command prompt and type "netstat -an" and check to see
if TCP 3389 is "listening". If it is something between the host and client
is blocking 3389 traffic...

--

Thanks,
Marc Reynolds
Microsoft Technical Support

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[dw]

Thanks, Marc. Here's the output of that command,

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 0.0.0.0:3389 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING

What else can we check to see what the problem is? Thanks

 

[Mohamed Abdulla]

"254.254.254.254" ??? is this a Class E IP address, I believe it is reserved
for experimental purposes. To make sure that the 3389 TCP port is opened on
the target PC, you can go to that PC, and from the prompt run the command:
"netstat -an". There you have to see an entry similar to the folowing:
"TCP 254.254.254.254:3389 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING". This indicates
that the RD service is running on that PC on the specified IP, and that it
is waiting for connection requests (it is in listening state) on that port.
If that is already there, then you may want to change the IP address to a
more common one (as this might not be a valid value for the target IP
address from within the RD client). I hope this helps track down the cause
of your problem. Any results from the suggested will give us more logic to
approach a solution that might help you.

 

[dw]

Thanks, Mohamed. I didn't get your result of "TCP 254.254.254.254:3389
0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING". Instead it gave a result of "TCP 0.0.0.0:3389
0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING" for that command. Thanks.

 

[dw]

Is there a solution for this problem? Thanks.

Thanks, Mohamed. I didn't get your result of "TCP 254.254.254.254:3389
0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING". Instead it gave a result of "TCP 0.0.0.0:3389
0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING" for that command. Thanks.


connection

 

[Bill Sanderson]

There darn well is a solution to this problem, but I don't think we've come
to it yet.

If I'm reading the thread right you have something (presumably terminal
services/Remote Desktop) listening on port 3389 as evidenced by the local
netstat command.

You can't connect to that listener via Telnet--so something is blocking the
traffic.

"The personal firewall has been turned off"--what form of firewall? Have
you checked that all services associated with that firewall and vendor are
no longer running?

The only oddity I've seen about RD associated with upgrade installs from
Windows 2000 is that sometimes group policy settings can have unexpected
values. The error message you are getting isn't one I'd associate with that
issue, however.

 

[Mohamed Abdulla]

Oh, so you don't have an entry similar to the one that should be there, Are
you sure? Because in addition to the entry you encountered (0.0.0.0:3389),
there should be another entry with the right IP address (in your case that
will be 254.254.254.254:3389). Have you tried changing the IP address of the
target PC (put it as 192.168.100.100/24 for example, then set your client PC
to the same subnetwork IP address : say 192.168.100.200/24 for example).
After that you may want to run the "netstat -an" command again on the target
PC and this time search in the list for an entry that looks like "TCP
192.168.100.100:3389
0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING". If this is not encountered within the output of
the "NETSTAT" command, then there is your problem. Go to the Target PC, and
check why isn't it starting the service. It seems that the service is
started (you have the 0.0.0.0:3389 entry), but there is no IP address
assigned to that PC ! Please experiment first with changing the IP address
of the target PC (the PC hosting the RD Service). That can be achieved by
giving it a fixed static IP address rather than a DHCP acquired one. Then
re-start the RD Service on that PC, and check with the "netstat -an"
command. Before you can connect to that PC, you should see a positive entry
in the output of the netstat command (an entry with listening state on the
configured IP address on port 3389). That's what I would do as a start to
troubleshoot it, because after all, if you have the RD service running on
the right PC using the right configured IP address, it should work, and you
should be able to connect to it. Sorry if that does not help you much, but I
hope it shades some light on the logic you may follow while troubleshooting
this issue.

 

[dw]

Thank you, Bill and Mohamed. We'll try these suggestions and post to this
thread again as to the results. Thanks.