Friday, December 02, 2005

Getting Remote Desktop to Work with Media Center

With Windows XP (and Windows Media Center) Microsoft has made it easy to setup remote desktop so you can remotely login to your PC and run applications or do whatever you want. But before you ask, you really can’t use remote desktop as a full featured Media Center extender. That’s because you can’t view video over remote desktop. I have read on The Green Button of people being able to use remote desktop to play music and view photos though so there are some possibilities.

Setting up remote desktop is pretty easy and I found Pain In the Tech to have the best instructions. Here’s the quick setup:

1. First, enable remote desktop on the computer you want to login to by going to ‘System Properties’ and selecting the ‘Remote’ tab. Then select the check box to enable remote desktop.

2. Next, you need to make sure you have a password protected user account on the computer you want to login to. Go to control panel and select add new user and make sure it’s password protected.

3. Now, still in the ‘Remote’ tab, go to the ‘Select Remote User’ and add the user account you just created.

4. If you have a software firewall, you will have to open the port 3389 to allow remote desktop to work. You have to do the same with your router. I have a linksys router and if you go into the configuration setup you can set the port forwarding:

Enable-router-for-remote-desktop

5. You need to know the IP address of the computer you want to login to. You can do this by typing ‘ipconfig’ at the run prompt. You’ll need to enter this IP address in your router configuration for port forwarding.

6. On the computer that you are using to remote desktop into the computer you just setup for remote desktop (say that five times fast) go to ‘Start|All Programs|Accessories|Communications|Remote Desktop Connection’. You need to enter the IP address of the computer you want to login to and then you should see the login screen. Enter the username and password of the account you setup and you are done!

This works fine for me on a Windows XP PC but when I try to login to my Media Center PC it doesn’t work – it says it can’t find the host computer. Maybe I don’t have my linksys router settings correct? Or is there something different I need to do with Media Center?

If you’ve got remote desktop working with your Media Center PC leave me some comments if you had to do something different to set it up.  

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posted by Tim Coyle at 1:00 AM

from: Blogger Andy Atkinson, Blogger Ed Bott, Blogger Tim Coyle, Blogger Ed Bott, Blogger Tim Coyle,

5 Comments:

Thanks for the link to Pain in the Tech, I hope you stop by again. I'm going to be working on some more remote connection articles over the holidays.

By Blogger Andy Atkinson, at 1:10 AM  

Tim, do you have a Media Center Extender of any sort on your network?

By Blogger Ed Bott, at 10:06 AM  

Hi Ed,
I use to have a media center extender but I don't anymore. I didn't have an extender when I tried to setup Windows remote desktop. I downloaded TightVNC and that worked just fine for me ...

By Blogger Tim Coyle, at 11:36 AM  

Tim, I have two PCs running Media Center here. On the system I use for everyday work, I have no trouble using Remote Desktop. On the one I actually use as a Media Center with two extenders, Remote Desktop doesn't work. One possibility is that because the Extenders use Remote Desktop, they disable conventional use of this feature. If you had an extender at one time, it may be that the extender software is still installed. You might try removing it if so.

VNC works, but Remote Desktop is much smoother.

By Blogger Ed Bott, at 11:29 AM  

I do still have the Media Center extender software installed. I can see that the extender account under remote desktop is still there so I will try to remove that and see what happens. Thanks for the insights!

By Blogger Tim Coyle, at 12:46 AM  

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