Remote Desktop

[tonyd]

About a month ago PeteF posted a great article about using XP's Remote Assistant. Since then Laplink sent me LapLink Gold and PC Everywhere. These three products seem to have some commonality.

There are a couple of computers that I'd like to be able to view and control from my office.

[dbarrow]

The others cost money .... Remote Desktop is already built-in and free!
Not to mention, I think the others use the features of RD and just charge you for the interface!

RD is really a fantastic tool!
Read all the MSKB articles on RD so you fully understand it.
I have used it to run Windows Updates, install programs, configure programs, transfer files, run a program from the remote machine, all kinds of nifty stuff!

Be sure to read instructions on changing the default port 3389.
If you don't have a router, you will get a lot of unsolicited port pings attempting entry as it is a common default port.

You have to set up port forwarding in your router, firewall, and set up both machines to use it. Once configured, it's just a one click operation.

If you intend to do any file transfer, you have to have a high speed broadband connection or it will be extremely slow. With cable, it's about the same as having the machine locally on your network and file share is a breeze.

This does require USERs with logon and pw so make sure you have an Administrative user account with pw on all the machines.