Remote Desktop

So here is my problem. I used to use remote desktop to access my laptop from the computers at my college. It worked fine, no problems. The port would be forwarded from my router to the laptop (which is wireless). I could also remotely access one computer on my home network from another one. This worked perfectly. All of a sudden it stoped working. Remote desktop is enabled on my laptop (I checked about a billion times). The port is being forwarded to the laptop. My firewalls allow Remote Desktop to be used. And yet for some reason I cannot access my laptop from school or another computer on the network. Does anyone know what could be wrong?

 

Is the IP address of the laptop static or dynamic? If, for example you originally noted that its LAN IP was 192.168.0.3 and set your router to forward Remote Desktop ports to that IP, it would of course work-- as long as the IP doesn't change.

Let's say all your LAN IPs are being dynamically assigned by the router's DHCP server. You turn off all your computers, and turn them back on one by one. The order of the assignments of the IPs will depend on what order you choose turn power them up. So that leaves the potential that the laptop won't necessarily get the same IP every time you happen to reboot, power failure, router power cycle, etc.

If this is the case with you, set the laptop to a static IP address that is at least one number higher than the number of computers that are hooked to the router, e.g. if 3 PCs (total), set it to at 192.168.0.4 or higher. The router is going to be 192.168.0.1, and the other two machines can still be dynamically assigned 2 and 3.

 

all my computer's IPs are static cause I knew if I ever wanted to get on them remotely that they would need to be static

 

If you would have said it was just a problem from school, I would have assumed some type of blocking of that type of traffic by them, but both school and home is perplexing. Were you using the default listening port of 3389? Or had you changed it? If so, did it somehow get changed back?

 

I just checked it and it is port 3389. At first I thought the school was blocking it, but like you said, its weird how it won't work at home.

 

Have you power-cycled the router since this started happening? It may just be one of those confused router hiccups.

 

yes its been turned off before, I don't think this is the problem but could it because my router's IP is different from my modem's?

 

Not sure I know what you're trying to say. Your cable or DSL provider's DHCP server is assigning the modem an IP (assuming you don't have static IP service), which is what's known as the router's "WAN side" IP, The router's LAN side IP is going to be the 192.168.x.x one. The WAN side IP is the one you have to know to remote in from school, which you've apparently been able to do in the past.

 

I was talking about the IP used to access the router and/or modem (I believe thats the LAN). Like if your directly connected to the modem and you want to edit some settings you would go to 198.168.1.1, well my router had the same IP address so I could enter it and edit the settings but I changed it. So now the IP to enter into the modem is 192.... and the IP to enter the router is 109.... what I am wondering is if they have to be the same in order for remote desktop to work

 

So you're saying you have web-interface access to some setting screen(s) in your modem? That's unusual, in my experience-- at least not without some beyond-average-user doing.

 

The only way I can do that is if I directly connect to the modem, otherwise I just get the router's setting screens.

 

If you still cannot get this to work after a while, I suggest using realvnc ( www.realvnc.com )

 

thank you but the thing is it should work because it did before, and i would like to solve this problem instead of just getting around it, but thank you anyway

 

I don't think that's a cause of conflict. Just as you access your router's setup screens by navigating to it's default IP, it's simply that the router is responding to requests to that IP when the router is between the PC and modem.

SB: As to switching applications, if RD worked before, it should work again, once the problem is identified and rectified.

 

could there be a setting in the modem that is preventing this?

 

What I meant is that, if the router and modem both specify the same 192.168.x.x IP to access their setup screens, you're always going to get the router's when it's in the chain. If it worked before, and you haven't hooked up directly to the modem and changed anything, it's not likely to be the issue.

Has there been any change to user accounts on the laptop or clients? Maybe a permissions issue? What error do you get when trying the connection?

 

i don't remember the error exactly word for word but it is something along the lines of the computer i am trying to connect to may not have remote desktop enabled, but i know this is not true because like i've said before i checked this many times, if you want tomorrow i can get the exact error.

Permissions could be a possibility but not on my laptop because there are only 2 users on my laptop, myslef and the default adminstrator account which is also mine. Unless somehow they got changed.

 

If you didn't make any changes to any users on the RD host machine, then that's not it.

 

it seems to me that something is blocking it that i am unaware of

 

And if it's both locally and across the net, it would imply the RD host or the router.

 

ok well tomorrow i'll get the error and post it up

 

I was unable to test the remote desktop today so I could not get the error but if anyone has any suggestions on how I may fix this problem or any settings I should check that may be causing it please let me know. Thank you.

P.S. I don't know if this information will help, but I am able to remotely access my router.

 

I think I have figured out what the problem is, but I do not know how to resolve it. When I try to repair my connection I always get an error when it tries to clear the DNS cache. I removed the static IP from my computer so everything would be assigned by the DHCP and tried to repair again and still the DNS cache could not be cleared. I tried using the ipconfig /flushdns command in cmd and it gave me an error. Also when I use the ipconfig /displaydns I get an error saying "Could not display the DNS resolver cache". How can I fix this? NEVER MIND I GOT THIS WORKING

 

Did you talk to your isp to see if they've changed something recently?
abri

 

no i haven't, but what could they change that would make remote desktop not work within my own home network?

 

here is the error that i get when trying to use remote desktop:

The client could not connect to the remote computer.

Remote connections might not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to accept new connections.
It is also possible that network problems are preventing your connection.

Please try again later. If the problem continues to occur, contact your adminstrator.

any suggestions?

 

Check the Windows XP Firewall

Steve

 

Well i am not home right now so i can't test that, but i belive my windows firewall is completely disabled, but i do not remember. If it is disabled (I will let you know later) what else could I do?

Let me just say thank you to everyone who is trying to help. I have done alot of troubleshooting on my own and I cannot figure out the problem, so thank you for trying.

 

i don't have that under the Advanced tab, all I have is the Windows Firewall with a button that says Settings. The windows firewall is disabled.

 

Do you have Norton's Anti-Virus installed? The new "worm protection" might block the connection.

Steve

 

no i have McAfee