Remote desktop on Vista Home/Premium

[acropolite]

Found something that may be of interest during my day to day work. Vista home and home premium do not support remote desktop. If you have either of these OS's there's a nice patch which activates the knobbled RDP service that already exists in that OS. I've installed it a couple of times and it works a treat. Note that it is imperitive that the procedure is followed to the letter, particularly the bit about using "RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR" to install the patch from the command prompt. There are a few versions out there some of which are pre service pack one, so check your update status before installing. Have a read through this thread (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/19/156341/ShowThread.aspx), there links to a few patches, read carefully then install the one that suits.

[lineout]

You could also install a Live Mesh which not only syncs all your files but has remote desktop allowing you to remote to any PC (XP, Vista)

[ozstockman]

I tried it this Saturday following the same instructions but from different website and it didn't work for me at all. The Patch was installed without any problems with permissions but I still couldn't connect to the PC running Home Premium.

Actualy there is RDP service in Home Premium installed by default and it can be used to connect to another computer but you cannot connect to the PC running Home Premium.

Then I tried UltraVNC(free remote desktop software) and it worked. However it's so slow comparing to RD. Moreover and this is the worst thing I could not find a way to connect it to a PC without being logged in firtst sitting in front of it.

So finally I gave up, went to Officeworks and bought Anytime upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate. Upgraded my PC yesterday and I've got the PC which has been bought to be used for remote desktop connection because it's powerfull and tiny(less than A4 papper size and 8cm thick).

If anybody is interested in something under $500 that can fit under your EQ6 mount head and has both wireless and bluetooth along with 4xUSB then check for ASUS Nova p20. You can buy them from australian ebay.

cheers,

Mike

[acropolite]

Mike if you don't follow the option using the run command "run as administrator' the process will fail and no amount of fiddling will get it working, I know because I failed to do it on an installation and couldn't get the RDP server running. I then reinstalled vista and repeated the procedure using the run prompt with "run as administrator" (right click on the run option and select "run as administrator) and the RDP service worked perfectly. It doesn't matter whether the user profile is administrator you still need to run as administrator. I've installed this patch 3 times now, the only time it failed, was when I didn't use the "run as administrator" option.

[ozstockman]

Phil, you're right. I didn't follow it at the first time because I was logged in with administrator account and I got access denied message when the patch was trying to replace a dll.
After the first unsuccesfull try I rolled my Home Premium back to start from scratch. I run the patch with the "run as admin" option this time and it was patched without any errors during the patching process.

However it didn't help and I wasn't able to connect to this PC and moreover I got system reports that two or three network services including DNS and network awarness couldn't start up.
I tried to run this patch 5-6 times after that rolling back to the point before its installation and restarting the PC first but I had no luck.

Then I decided to give up. Mostly because it doesn't work for me and it affects other network services but also because users report that it wont work with SP1 installed and you will need to patch it again.

cheers,

Mike