Connect to Remote Desktop: How To Connect to Home Computer, Free

First off you will need to be running a version of Windows at home which has remote desktop server capabilities. These include Windows Vista and XP Pro, but for the sake of this article, I will be talking about how to connect to remote desktop with XP Pro. A quick way to find out if your version of windows has remote desktop is to go into system properties (right click my computer->properties OR start->run->sysdm.cpl) and go to the remote tab. If there is a section there which says "Remote Desktop", then you are good to go. Also, one prerequisite is that the account that you want to sign on with MUST have a password.

Next thing you will need is a router, without a router accomplishing this is not possible. Whether you buy wireless or wired, it does not matter, you will still be able to connect either way. If you are going to use a wireless router, DON'T LEAVE IT UNSECURED , make sure to set some sort of encryption up on it.

So we have Windows and a router, we are ready to go.

1. So first thing, on your home computer check the box in system properties->remote desktop "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer". You want to then check "Select remote users", type in your user name and click check just to make sure, then click ok.

(Sorry the picture is from my Vista machine, same screen though.)

Next you want to punch a hole in your router / firewall to enable the remote session through. Let me first say that having some sort of firewall is crucial to security, whether it is hardware and/or software, disabling the firewall is not recommended in any circumstance. What you want to do is open up the port to allow this traffic only.
a. So let's start with windows firewall, step 1 probably already took care of this, but if it didn't, here is how to do it. Go to control panel->security center->firewall and click on the exceptions tab. Scroll down until you see "Remote Desktop" and make sure the check box is checked.
b. OK now, the router, note if you do not have a router, go get one, having your computer hooked directly up to the internet (directly to a cable modem) is just asking for trouble (oh yea and you can stop here b/c this won't work unless you have a router). So what you need to do is find out the address of your router and how you do this is as follows: Click start->run-> and type cmd. In the command prompt window, type ipconfig, you will see something called default gateway, that's the router! It will probably be 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 99% of the time on home networks. While you are here, also take note of your ip address. OK, now connect to the router by typing that default gateway address into a web browser. You want to look for a page called port forwarding. This all varies on the type of router that you have, but generally it is under security on the router page. Now you want to forward port 3389 TCP to your ip address or computer name. Some, but not all routers offer you the luxury of seeing the computer name on this page, in this case, select your computer, otherwise enter the ip address you took note of earlier. Note: if your ip address is set to DHCP, you may want to change it to static IF your router does not offer you the luxury of forwarding to computer names.

There are plenty of places to do this, for on register with a site like no ip, they will be able to give you a domain name, for free, yes we love free.

OK, are you ready to connect to your home computer now? From the computer that you are connecting from, you can access remote desktop a couple of ways either start->programs->accessories->Remote Desktop Connection, or start->run-> and type mstsc. Now put in the domain name that you registered in step 3 and voila!! Login!!

For the sake of this article I cannot talk about every piece of firewall software out there so, if you have a 3rd party software firewall, you must add an exception for port 3389 / protocol TCP / scope any.

Once you are able to accomplish these steps, you will be able to connect to remote desktop connection to your home machine from anywhere in the world, good luck!

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