Remote Desktop refusing connections

I am running into a unique situation with Remote Desktop that I have never seen before. I have 3 PC's, two laptops and 1 desktop, all running Win 7 64B retail. Under normal circumstances I use the desktop as the hub of my work and remote desktop into the laptops when I need. Last night I installed a MS Update that included a driver update for my MS Wireless keyboard. After the necessary reboot of that, Remote Desktop from my desktop to any of the laptops has completely stopped working.


All the PC's are connected into the same switch that is connected to the internet. I can ping back and forth from the desktop to the laptop successfully. I can Remote desktop between the two laptops successfully. However, no matter what I do I can't Remote Desktop from the desktop to anything. I have tried giving all the PC's new names, creating a different workgroup and adding them to that, creating a new Admin account on the desktop and trying that. All with no success. I have also tried disabling the firewall on both the desktop and the laptops, still no success. I would uninstall the MS update for the keyboard driver, but it isn't showing up in the list of updates that I can back out of.

Please help.

Doug

What remote desktop software are you using can i ask? If its the built in win 7 then i don't recommend using it.

If all your systems are connected to your home wireless or lan router then i would ether use Real VNC or Teamviewer. I personally like Teamviewer over Real VNC because it's free for personal use & in my opinion faster. You can set it up to accept over the net connections or limit to LAN only where you would use the IP of that system to connect.

I have played with plenty of remote desktop solutions & nothing i tried is as good as teamviewer for speed & reliability. So if i was you, give it a try & im sure you won't be displeased.

Originally Posted by VsUK

What remote desktop software are you using can i ask? If its the built in win 7 then i don't recommend using it.

If all your systems are connected to your home wireless or lan router then i would ether use Real VNC or Teamviewer. I personally like Teamviewer over Real VNC because it's free for personal use & in my opinion faster. You can set it up to accept over the net connections or limit to LAN only where you would use the IP of that system to connect.

I have played with plenty of remote desktop solutions & nothing i tried is as good as teamviewer for speed & reliability. So if i was you, give it a try & im sure you won't be displeased.

I am using the built in Remote Desktop Connection. I have considered VNC, but have never heard of Teamviewer, but I will check it out. I have tried about everything I can think of, and still nothing.

TeamViewer - Free Remote Control, Remote Access & Online Meetings if you don't know already. You can buy a licence that allows you to connect to 2 or more systems at once without getting the annoying pop ups about are you sure this is for personal use. But aside from that its free for home/personal use & you dont even have to install it, you can run it from the exe or install for more features.

Let me know how it pans out for you if you try teamviewer because im yet to run in to problems that prevented me connecting other that allowing it on the firewall installed on the system when you first try & connect, which is annoying sometimes when you forget & you try connecting over the net to find out you can't because you need to give permission from the fw first on the other end

Remote Desktop is not available in all versions of Windows 7. You need at least the Pro version....

Originally Posted by Saltgrass

Remote Desktop is not available in all versions of Windows 7. You need at least the Pro version....

I am running Win Pro 7 64B on all the computers. As mentioned this WAS working for years, and then it stopped working all of the sudden

I have been doing Remote Desktop connections to my 4 systems. I don't normally use it so I had to learn how...

I am sure your systems were set up correctly, but maybe something changed some setting. On the Remote tab in System properties, I have Allow Remote Assistance unchecked, and under Remote Desktop, I have Allow only from computers with Network Level Authentication, which may not be necessary for a home system.

I select Remote Desktop Connection on the Start Menu, Accessories, and use the name of the computer to connect to. Since I am Admin, my user name is already setup, so I leave the User name as None Specified. I hit connect and a password dialog comes up. After entering that, I get a warning about credentials, probably because of my choice in connection type allowed. When I say yes to connect anyway, the connection comes up.

Making the connection, does log off the other computer. I did have the Apple Bonjour service running, but I stopped it, which may or may not be relevant. I did not have to turn off the Windows firewall, or Microsoft Security Essentials.

On one of my systems, I use a Wireless AP. That had to be rebooted to be able to reach that computer. I was getting an 0x80070035 error about the path was not found.

If you use the Network and Sharing Center to make a full map of your network, do all the computers show up?