Remote Desktop Problems

[SLCentral]

Hey guys,

My dad likes to connect from his laptop in the living room to the system upstairs to do work, but we're having some problems. It's always worked with no problem, sometimes the last digit of the IP (101, 102, 103, etc) would change, but nothing that was actually an issue. Yesterday, it randomlly stopped working. completely unexpectantly. I restarted both computers, with no luck. Doing a system restore to the last time we used it (a couple of days back) made it start working again.

He's been using it all day today. He disconnected for about an hour, and when he went back to connect, it wouldn't go through. It just times out, which is really strange. I'm sure we have the IP right, and I know no ports have to be opened, since this is just locally. I don't want to have to continually do system restores, so is there anything I can do to fix this?

In case it helps, the system being accessed is a Athlon XP 1600+, 768MB RAM, and a nVidia GeForce 2, with, of course, Windows XP Professional. I'm using a Dell Inspiron 4100? with XP Home to access it as well.

Any help would really be appreciated.

 

[Tarrant64]

Run Ad-Aware and Spybot to see if anything shows up.

Also, check firewall settings in Windows XP Pro.

About all I can think of at the moment.

 

[LatinJones]

What program are you using for remote access? I use Remote Administrator and I noticed something strange the other day. Spybot S&D detect part of the r_admin program as spyware and removes a few registry entries. I figured it was a long shot but if you ran spybot recently, part of your remote program might not be working.

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: LatinJones
What program are you using for remote access? I use Remote Administrator and I noticed something strange the other day. Spybot S&D detect part of the r_admin program as spyware and removes a few registry entries. I figured it was a long shot but if you ran spybot recently, part of your remote program might not be working.

remote desktop uses its own client

 

[SLCentral]

I'll try Adaware/SpyBot tonight, hopefully that'll fix things. Thanks for the advice, guys.

 

[stash]

Erm, did you see if it was still enabled? Right click my computer, properties, remote tab, allow users to connect remotely...?

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: STaSh
Erm, did you see if it was still enabled? Right click my computer, properties, remote tab, allow users to connect remotely...?

I'm not that dumb 🙂. Checked this already.

 

[stash]

Heh, had to ask 🙂

What about the firewall on his system? What is the error you get when you try to connect?

 

[talyn00]

i'm assuming the IP addresses are statically assigned ?

 

[JOHNGALT99]

didnt read it was local

 

[HKSturboKID]

Rule of thumb to troubleshoot network related problems.

1. Ping loopback (127.0.0.1) If successful...IP stack is initialize
2. Ping IP Localhost - If successful...Nic is functioning
3. Ping Gateway - If successful host communication to router is OK.
4. Ping Remote server - If fails...check cables from router or repeat step 1 to 3 from the destination machine.

Good luck.

 

[Granorense]

Originally posted by: HKSturboKID
Rule of thumb to troubleshoot network related problems.

1. Ping loopback (127.0.0.1) If successful...IP stack is initialize
2. Ping IP Localhost - If successful...Nic is functioning
3. Ping Gateway - If successful host communication to router is OK.
4. Ping Remote server - If fails...check cables from router or repeat step 1 to 3 from the destination machine.

Good luck.

You can try UltraVNC which is very nice, free and very easy to set up. Text

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: Granorense

Originally posted by: HKSturboKID
Rule of thumb to troubleshoot network related problems.

1. Ping loopback (127.0.0.1) If successful...IP stack is initialize
2. Ping IP Localhost - If successful...Nic is functioning
3. Ping Gateway - If successful host communication to router is OK.
4. Ping Remote server - If fails...check cables from router or repeat step 1 to 3 from the destination machine.

Good luck.

You can try UltraVNC which is very nice, free and very easy to set up. Text

It's a shame, I would use VNC but I've heard that its just so much slower then RD and not really as user-friendly, my dad's very basic when it comes to computing, can he "handle" it?