Remote Desktop and Win7

I can't RDP from my Win7Pro pc at work to my Win7Pro pc at home. RDP-ing to my XP box is no problem. I have set up port forwarding through my NetGear 4300 router and I have opened the port in my Win7Pro firewall at the remote computer.

I can however connect to the Win7Pro box from my XP box using either the pc name or the ip.

I cannot use the default port of 3389 because that is blocked at work, so I use a different range of ports for my home connections and all work fine.

I feel I'm missing something simple.

 

I think I've ruled out a firewall setting as I tried disabling Windows Firewall and still was not able to make a connection.

I know I can get to my router because I can get to my xp box thru it. I mimmicked the port forwarding settings that I have for my xp box and only specified a different port for my win7 box. I know I've set the static ip correctly as it shows up as an attached device in my router.

I can connect from my xp box with either the computer name or the internal ip address.

My anti-virus is AVG-Free and doesn't have a firewall

I've also tried disabling TCPIP V6, but I can't reboot my win7 box remotely.

 

Ahhhh, I may have found my problem. I never changed the listening port for RDP in the registry. I was able to make that change when RDP-ing from my XP box, but I don't have the option of rebooting until I get home.

 

jefflbi...

Thanks for passing on this information. So, because you had to assign ports, you were required to make a registry change? That's interesting.

If you get a chance, please leave some details on what you had to do. I would really like to see how to do this. Seems like this could be a very useful security measure...define your own port for RD.

I wonder if you can do that and then specify somehow that nothing else can use the port? Hmmm. I've been searching for a way to securely use RTD since the XP days ...

 

When I get to work tomorrow, I'll look in my history and see what page it was on that gave the details of changing the default listening port for RDP. I totally forgot that that's what I had to do to my XP box to be able to remote desktop into it from work.

 

Thanks...

 

Here's the link:
http://tweaks.com/windows/50743/change-remote-desktop-rdp-port/

It's really not a hard process, and I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't remember. But just remember that once you change the port in the registry, whatever you decided to change it to, you have to add that port in in the firewall settings. In Win7 you have the option of specifying the port as TCP or UDP. TCP is probably all you need to specify, but I create separate rules for same port number, set both ways. Someone here with more knowledge may be able to clarify.

Good luck!

 

jefflbi...

Appreciate the information and the link. I have always left RD off and avoided using the feature...and I have always tried to understand why MS didn't find an answer for securing a feature in Windows that would sure make a large number of customers happy to be able to use securely.

Thanks