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Windows Vista Business, Ultimate and XP Professional come with remote desktop. Remote desktop enables you to access another computer on your network, or a computer with a static IP address.

In this guide you’ll learn how to enable remote desktop connection and then use it to access your PC. You may also learn some keyboard shortcuts for remote desktop connection here.

Please note: If this method doesn’t work for you, try LogMeIn

Remote desktop connections are extremely useful when you want to make a change on a different computer in your network, but you don’t have the time to move between them.

In this guide you’ll see how I can log into on of my servers at work, which is over 1,700 miles away, and then log on to one of the 50+ computers on the network. I hope you can experience similar benefits from using RD.

Please note: This guide is written for Windows Vista but the procedure is almost the same for XP; this guide is sufficient to teach you how to enable remote desktop for both Vista and XP.

Enable Remote Desktop Connections

To enable remote desktop, do the following:

1. Click the Start button, right click on Computer and select Properties

2. In the left pane, click Remote Settings

3. Select either Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop (less secure) or Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authenticate (more secure)

Accessing Enabled Computers Remotely

1. Click the Start button, type Remote and press Enter

2. Now type in the full computer name (ask your network administrator if you don’t know this name) and press Enter. After entering your login information, you will then be connected.

The full computer name is also known as a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), a full computer name includes the host (computer) name, the domain name, and all the higher level domains. For example, the full computer name of a computer named “user” might be user.example.mintywhite.com.

Example of Remote Desktop Connection

Here is a screenshot of my laptop computer remotely accessing one of my work servers (Windows Server 2003) 1,700 miles away. You can also see that I have then opened a remote session into my workstation (Windows XP), which is across the room from the server.

[Click for a larger image]

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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