Enable Remote Desktop Connection on Vista Home Premium

Edit: I have now made a patch zip file for Vista SP1 32bit available here: http://www.unet.fi/fransblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/termsrv_sp1.zip (NOTE: my file repository will be offline for some time from now on, hope you can find the file from elsewhere… hope it works for you, it did ok for my Home Premium SP1. However, note that I am not the original author of this hack, and can not offer any detailed technical help if something goes wrong; use only on your own responsibility, etc. Note that this does NOT work for the 64bit Vista.) — Note: commenting currently disabled (the thread is getting too long…)

There are many nice, but also quite many really irritating aspects to Windows Vista. Some are due to Microsoft intentionally crippling their own products. One of the most tiresome has been the disabling of Remote Desktop Connection. If you have to run down the stairs every time to check whether a particular process has ended or not, it gets old really quick, and double so when you realise that Vista Home Premium actually includes fully-featured Remote Desktop service, it is just broken by design. Here are the instructions to turn it back on — thanks a lot, guys!

Steps to Add Remote Desktop to Vista Home Premium:

1. Download termsrv.zip here
2. Extract Termsrv.zip to a temp directory
3. Start “Command Prompt” in Administrator mode (Run As Administrator)
4. Run the corresponding batch file for your Vista edition
5. Allow TCP Port 3389 on Windows Firewall or any other firewall product.
6. Done

See: TonyChan.Org Blogs – Remote Desktop on your Windows Vista Home Premium.

Author: frans

Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, esp. Digital Culture and Game Studies in the Tampere University, Finland. Occasional photographer and gardener.

594 thoughts on “Enable Remote Desktop Connection on Vista Home Premium”

  1. That’s great, Frans. I have to admit I didn’t even know there was a Windows solution like that to begin with. I’ve been using RealVNC to connect to my media PC. A Google search shows that a MS client could be installed on my desktop, but no sofware for my server as they both run on the ancient W2k Pro.

    Now let me count how many OS generations I’m already behind… 😉

  2. Well, VNC connections run nicely as well, to my experience. I use it to access my server too, as it runs on Linux. Some say that in a Windows machine VNC takes up more resources than RDC though, but I have not compared them side-by-side. It was just easier to get this Vista workstation to enable its broken RDC service than get it to allow incoming VNC connections, or that was how it was for me.

  3. Amazing!

    You have saved me. I was wondering how the hell am I going to do now..

    Already tried XP but no hardware support for my new HP laptop. Tried also ubuntu but still need some Windows programs.

    Thank you!
    Sion

  4. I just tried this on the version of vista home premium on my new toshiba a210. When I ran the install for the toshiba it created a user with administrator rights. However when I tried the above, I get permission denied on every step.
    Seeing this, I’m guessing vista has another user level or the administrator rights are not full for everything?

  5. Actually, the block you are seeing is the User Account Control. Microsoft put this on the system to stop users from running commands they might want to make without first accepting every step. Gotta love the intricacies. Frans, you made a great breakthrough here and I cannot wait to get home and push this to my vista mce. Might modify it to stop the system from breaking the original login by limiting user sessions, but.

    Anyways, not I just gotta figure out how to force-limit listening to a single IP for RDP, searching on….

  6. I was so happy to see this posting since my new computer came with Vista Home Premium and the only service it didn’t have that I really wanted was Remote Desktop sharing. I’ve downloaded the zip and followed the instructions and it does appear that the service is running on port 3389 but no computer on my network can connect to it. There is no error, the client just seems to give up after a few seconds of trying to connect. I disabled my firewall and AV to make sure they weren’t interfering but it made no difference. Are there further steps to follow that I’ve missed?

  8. It appears that the termsrv.dll wasn’t copying over properly (even though I’m pretty sure it said it did in the cmd window). Anyway, I copied the file manually and started it up and it’s working great now! Thanks for pointing me to Tony’s blog.

  9. there’s an error:

    Source Folder is C:\DATA\termsrv\
    Taking ownership of C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
    ERROR: The current logged on user does not have administrative privileges.
    Granting Administrators rights
    C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll: Access is denied.
    Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 1 files
    Stopping Terminal Services
    System error 5 has occurred.

    Access is denied.

    Access is denied.
    0 file(s) copied.
    Copying C:\DATA\termsrv\termsrv.dll to C:\Windows\System32\
    Access is denied.
    0 file(s) copied.
    Importing Registry Keys
    Enabling RDP
    ERROR: Access is denied.
    Setting fSingleSessionPerUser to 1
    ERROR: Access is denied.
    Setting LimitBlankPasswordUser to 1
    ERROR: Access is denied.
    Configuring Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall

    Starting Terminal Services
    System error 5 has occurred.

    Access is denied.

    Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    TCP 0.0.0.0:3389 TrinhThanhSu:0 LISTENING
    TCP [::]:3389 TrinhThanhSu:0 LISTENING
    Service is listening
    Done
    Press any key to continue . . .

    I used an administrative account. What’s wrong?

  10. Sorry Trinh, I have no idea what is wrong in your case; I can only suggest you keep on trying, and search for other forums for help. The patch seems to work in most cases, though.

  11. Trinh – you need to disable UAC:

    Launch Control Panel
    Type “UAC” in the search box at the upper-right hand corner of the window
    The option to disable UAC is the first search result.

    the rerun the batch file ….. you then need to edit the firewall to add an entry for port 3389 and open it.

    HTH
    Mal

  12. Unfortunately SP1 (rc1) current disables this RDP hack, mainly cause they say they have upgraded the algorithm of RDP. Any ideas anyone?

  13. Hmm. Thanks Ed for the information. It looks like we have basically two options: to postpone upgrading to SP1 (if you want to have RDC available), or upgrade, and just hope and wait that an updated hack comes available soon..?

  15. Dan, yes, VNC works, and it has the benefit of being platform-independent. On the other hand, many of us still prefer to use RDC in Windows-to-Windows situations, since it is a faster solution. And that is where SP1 upgrade seems to create problems in Vista.

    I established today a Mac-to-Vista connection from my livingroom Mac Mini, and rather than using the native Mac VNC implementation, or the open source version (Chicken of the VNC), I ended up using RealVNC for this (launch it in server, rather than service form in Vista, then install and use the Mac version of RealVNC viewer, available from: http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi?product=enterprise4/vncviewer/macosx ).

  16. I have found that you cannot use it on Vista Basic. Will give the permission errors that ‘Trinh’ received.

    Apart from that it works fine, there is one for XP as well, you can get it from antiwpa.org.

  18. Wizard: ok, I didn’t realise anyone would try to apply these Home Premium specific instructions on a Vista Basic, though.

    Ruth: command prompt is the text-only mode of using a computer operating system. In Windows versions you usually launch ‘cmd.exe’ to get to it, in other systems you might need an access to ‘terminal’, ‘console’ or something like that.

  20. Danny, you need to know how to use basic DOS commands like ‘cd’, navigate to the correct directory and then write the name of the bat file, and press enter, to run it.

  22. Currently it looks like you can acquire Vista SP1 only in March, or April, if you are using non-English versions. I wouldn’t hurry. But no: I do not know of any hacks yet that would work with the (soon-to-be-released) SP1 upgraded versions of Vista. Lets see and wait.

  24. Hmm… whats wrong with your installment trinh, is that you forgot to run it as administrator. Right click on it and say “run as administrator” that should fix the problem if you are the administrator.

  26. thx for the termsrv.zip file tip…fixed me up.

    MAKE SURE YOU SAVE THIS PAGE TO YOUR FAVORITES .. THIS WILL REQUIRE A RESTART AND YOU WILL NEED TO FIND THIS PAGE AGAIN EASY. SO YOU CAN COMPLETE THE PROCESS.

    step 1. First disable uac, click the start button, then click your picture in the top right of the menu (whatever picture you chose, flower, chess, fireworks..etc) this is a shortcut for going to user accounts in the control panel. Once you have clicked start, your login icon, then the last sentence on the right you will see
    (Turn User Account Control on or off) choose this option. Then take the check out of (Use User Account Control UAC to help protect your computer) click ok. Note that if you dont have a check in the UAC then continue to Step 2 without restarting. You will have to restart if you removed the check from UAC. After restart continue to step 2.

    Step 2.

    Click on start (round little windows icon in bottom left of your screen), Click on text (control panel),Top left click on text (Control Home).Then click on text (SECURITY) First Colum, second row, on right side.

    Once in Security:
    Far right, second category, last choice, click (Allow a
    program through windows firewall) Windows firewall settings will come up. Close to the bottom you will see some buttons, the second button close to the bottom is (Add Port) click. Add port box will popup, enter the following.

    Name: remotePort
    Port Number: 3389
    (Leave the protocol at TCP)
    (click OK) in port popup
    (click OK) in windows firewall settings popup

    Note that if you have Norton firewall, Kapersky, AVG Firewall or anyother THRID PARTY firewall you will need to go to there website and search for (ALLOWING PORTS).

    step 3.

    (Start, All Programs, Accessories, Command prompt) right click this icon and choose (Run as Administrator). Once at black screen called command prompt. We need to navigate to the file. The way we will do that is copying the address once we have unziped the file.

    (I have found the eaisest way to navigate to the file is when you unzip the file you downloaded choose for it to open the folder that the file you unziped is in. Or you can open Windows Explorer (start, computer) click. Once you are in the folder with the unzipped term files click in the address bar (just like in internet explorer and copy the directory link .. example (C:\Users\perry\Downloads\termsrv) this may or may not be different with you…it depends on where you choose to save your download.

    after you copy this link go back to the black screen program (command prompt) and paste it by (right click black screen, left click paste) once pasted, type the version of vista you have.
    EXAMPLE
    (C:\Users\perry\Downloads\termsrv\premium)
    EXAMPLE
    (C:\Users\perry\Downloads\termsrv\business)
    EXAMPLE
    C:\Users\perry\Desktop\termsrv\premium
    EXAMPLE
    C:\Users\perry\Desktop\business
    Remeber the last word in the address is the version of vista you have. Press enter on the keyboard.

    If you follow these directions exactly and get no errors and still cannot use Remote desktop, you may one of the following issues.

    Your router is blocking RDC and you need to allow it
    Your software firewall is blocking it like Zonealarm
    Or you have corrupted files
    All of which are out of the scope of this article of which i have no more time for sorry. God Bless. If this doesnt work dont email me and yell…pray to Jesus Christ for wisdom. Thats what i did. =) And he gave it to me by helping me find this site \o/ Romans 3:12, Romans 10:9

  27. Corrosione – thanks, your instructions are probably most detailed process description so far. No news on a SP1 hack yet, though.

  28. I tried, but some other prob
    When i enter my Credentials on the other computer, (from which im trying to access my own computer, both running Home Premium), it says that login failed.(and yes, i’m sure the password and username are correct).Any guesses?

  29. I just wanted to add my thanks as well, I had just bought Vista Home Premium for testing our websites on the latest OS and couldn’t believe I didn’t have a Remote Connection!

    Thanks very much!

  30. I just installed SP1 and it broke the RDC capability. So if anyone figures it out PLEASE let us all know.

    Thanks,

    R

  32. i have tryed installing this program, realy want it to work but the only problem that i have is that the port 3389 dose not listen. iv tryed fixing it but cant get it to work.

  33. UPDATE: I did find the ‘fix’ to make RDC work after SP1 patch install. Of course, now I need to go back and relocate the docs and bits and post it.

  34. Same Issue as Synergy… Letting me port 3389 isn’t listen.. Home Basic…

  35. Instead of disabling UAC, just *run* the command prompt as Administrator. It’s much easier, and in some people’s option, a better option to disabling UAC.

    Open the Start menu and look for the Command Prompt icon. If you don’t see it, open and close a command prompt window first (type cmd in the ‘start search’ field, then type exit once the command window is open). Right click on the Command Prompt Icon and select “Run as administrator” in the context menu.

    The batch file should run fine.

    This was tested on Vista Premium Home.

    Jimbo

  37. In Remote Desktop Connection Dialog, click Options>Local Resources>More and check the box “Drives”
    Now, connect.After you get the Remote computer’s Desktop started, goto its My Computer, and you’ll see your drives displayed there.
    Now use usual Cut,Copy,Paste procedures

  38. Roderic Dohleman or Frans,
    quick question… all setup worked fine, no errors, I get to the logon screen, but it says wrong username or pwd … I checked several times, and no luck… any ideas? (I only have 1 username defined, and it works ok to login with it on the vista home premium itself. tried removing the pwd and adding it back, no luck).
    thanks a lot!
    Andrei

  39. quick update… i tried the SP patched version of the termsrv.dll from
    http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/permalink/210408/242073/ShowThread.aspx#242073
    but that didnt seem to work either… with tihs DLL, it just doesn’t connect at all… I might not have the SP1 then… (sorry about that)… so i put it back to the original nonsp1 dll, and that does work up to prompting for password.. but again, it just doesn’t accept the pwd (the correct pwd).
    thanks again!!
    Andrei

  40. Dear Andrei, I did have the same problem as you, but fixed mine out. (u can read my post above)
    Here’s what happened to me, while installing Windows, my manufacturer set my name as “user” and then, at my home, i changed it to “Hunny”.Actually, the name originally set (“user” in my case) cannot be actually changed (according to what i know), “Hunny” is just shown by Windows, but the network username remains the same.(“user” in my case)
    So,to check if your havin same case,goto “C:\Users” and check the folders, there will be a Public folder, and a folder which is your personal folder (in my case, its “user” not “Hunny”).
    Now,note the name of that folder and try it as your logon at Remote Desktop Logon.

    Hope it works…Lemme Know…

  41. Oh more thing,
    Alternatively, to know your username, goto Task Manager and Click “Users” tab, there check your username displayed….
    All the best…

  42. Shantanu… you’re absolutely right!!
    WOW! I was now able to login with the “User” username and my usual pwd… how silly is this!!

    Thank you very much for letting me know!! Much appreciated!
    Andrei

  43. You’re welcome, well, causes to problems are silly in computer science, because anyway, humans made them, who like to make silly mistakes…
    Well, coming back to our other concern, any news of crack for SP1 ??

  44. what I understand from the link that frans posted earlier (see message in thread above), is that it actually does work. personally I tried tested it but it wouldnt work as I believe I don’t have SP1 installed (on my Vista Home Premium). However the messages on that forum seem to confirm that it does work.
    Cheers,
    Andrei

  45. Shantanu, Andrei — this looks promising, thank you very much. So, we can all be confident and go along with the SP1 update when it comes available through the Windows Update? Great!

  47. Shantanu: well, I decided to go for it in any case (SP1 arrived today into Update service); after this we will at least have more people trying to figure this thing out, I guess. 😉

  48. Guys, quick question: The patch for the SP1 is called “termsrv.sp1.patched.dll”.
    Do I just copy it in the “System32” folder, or do I have to rename it “termsrv.dll” to replace the old one?

    Thanks for your help.

  49. Larry, you do need to rename it and replace the existing one from System32\drivers but you won’t be able to as it’s locked by default as the service is running. so you could stop the terminal services services (I think…) then replace it, etc, however…

    it would be much simpler to just use the batch file that frans is mentinonig as it will do it for you (take ownership, stop the service, etc, and replace the file).

    good luck!
    Andrei
    PS. in the meantime, I reverted back to XP… Vista was much too slow when running VMWare Workstation on my laptop inspite of the 2Gb memory…

  54. This fix is GREAT. I thought i couldnt use RD with Vista premium.

    Does anyone have any advice for what to do when your normal passwd does not work??
    Ive got RD to connect just fine but RD does not seem to see up to date user names.

    I does find the admin name correctly but does not accept the correct password. Ive checked SHantanu’s fix for this- the username is right- but I cant get RD to take the right Admin password. Could I have some password I dont know about.

    Should i rerun the batch with UAC turned ON?? I turned it off for the initial install of termsrv.dll
    thansk
    edo

  55. Thanks for this. I recently upgraded to Vista (Home Premium) SP1 so was expecting this to get broken.

    The URL pasted up there ^^ somewhere does indeed work. I downloaded the patched .dll, downloaded your original files, renamed the old & patched DLLs and ran it – works perfectly.

    And, RDC does seem to work a lot more swiftly over my home network on my two Home Premium computers now, but still can’t get sound working which isn’t the end of the world!

  58. You don’t need to disable UAC if you run from an elevated command prompt. (Start>All Programs>Accessories the right-click command prompt and choose Run as Administrator) Disabling UAC is a bad idea, and if you plan to stick with Windows you need to learn how to work with it and around it.

  59. Right- UAC does not need to be disabled to do any of this.
    But still having a similar problem with the RD log on password prompt. Very similar to post #43 but the password is the issue. THe username matches.

    I do not have a password assigned to the administrator user yet it wants a password i dont knoe.
    I changed user passwords back and fourth on the remote machine to no avail.

    Does anybody know how to determine or reset this unknown password on the remote computer. I have spent some time reinstalling with sp1 and non sp1 batch file so I have determined that that this is not the issue.

    forever thankfull

  60. edo san: I have an interesting problem where I can log into RD successfully when I’m on my LAN, but when I try to connect remotely, it rejects my password.

    My hunch at this point is that there is some setting in Windows that is blocking remote access from outside the network, but I have no idea where to start looking.

  61. edo san: That didn’t take me nearly as long as I thought it would.

    Open up regedit on the machine running terminal server and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Terminal Server.

    Look for the AllowRemoteRPC key and set it to a value of 1 (instead of 0).

    This fixed my problem.

  62. Anyone else have a problem with the terminal services service not starting? Is this supposed to work on Home Premium x64?

    I tried starting the service manually and get an error that states “Windows could not start the Terminal Services on Local Computer Error 193:0xc1

    When the batch file is trying to finish, I get the below error:

    Starting Terminal Services
    The Terminal Services service is starting.
    The Terminal Services service could not be started.

    A system error has occurred.

    System error 193 has occurred.

    *** is not a valid Win32 application.

    Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    Service is not listening
    Done
    Press any key to continue . . .

  63. TravisP: Thank you for that tip, I have not tried to log on RD from an outside IP but plan to tommorrow to test the registry change you describe above.

    Regarding my original problem:
    Turns out that I had a mistake in my username afterall, it had been renamed (just like the problem and solution articulated in post #40). There was a blank password assigned (not allowed by RD) preventing RD log on.

  64. tried your sp1 script but with no joy – the batch file appeared to run through successfully, but when I go to remote settings there are stil no rdc options on the dialog. any suggestions what to try?

  65. tried again and this time the change is allowing me to access the Vista Home Premium PC from my XP Pro PC – but still don’t see the options in the Remote Settings. But who cares! It works, thanks for this fix

  66. lloyd: that is true, Vista remote settings does not show those extra options for me either, but the patch seems to make the system accept incoming RDC client connections in any case.

  67. I managed to get this to work a few weeks back but have noticed some odd behaviour. User account specific functions and features are often mishandled by the OS. For example, when I use my PDA to activesync if the other user account is logged in concurrently it will try to sync with that user’s information and not the other user account. Also, I find the HP services for my printer/scanner all in one device crashes all the time and I need to stop and restart all the relevant services. This all started after SP1 ):

  68. I’m having the same trouble you are Grimb.

    I installed first with the non sp1 patch it didn’t work so I read all these comments. Since then I’ve downloaded and tried the sp1 patch but I now get what you are getting Grimb. I can’t get the service to stay started and when the batch file listens on the port it finds its not listening.

    Event log says the following:
    Log Name: System
    Source: LSM
    Date: 3/30/2008 5:04:07 PM
    Event ID: 1048
    Task Category: None
    Level: Error
    Keywords: Classic
    User: N/A
    Computer: holtzman
    Description:
    Terminal Service start failed. The relevant status code was The remote procedure call failed.
    .

    Any ideas anyone?

  69. I’m having the same problem. I used this before SP1 and it worked like a charm. Now after I got SP1 and have tried installing the new termsrv.dll (using the premium.bat) i get the “Service is not listening” at the end of the command prompt.

    Any ideas anyone?

  70. NON-ENGLISH USERS:
    Change ‘Administrators’ to its translation in your own language. Example: ‘Administradores’ in Spanish. It drove me crazy until I realized that was preventing the patch to work in my Vista Home Premium Spanish version.
    Thanks Frans for your efforts!

  71. How do you manually add the service if you get the “Service is not listening” message?

  74. Its strange, because the new patch works fine on my Vista Home Premium SP1

    Make sure you’re running Premium.bat in elevated mode, i.e.Right Click>Run As Administrator

    If still it says service not listening, goto Start>Run and type “services.msc” and press enter.
    Check if the “Terminal Services” is set to Automatic and is Running.

    Further u can also try typing “C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k NetworkService” in Start>Run and pressing enter, though i’m not sure it’ll work or not, but is worth a try…

  75. I did the Run as Administrator before. I went into services.msc and Terminal Services was and is set to automatic and is started. Also, I just re-ran the premium.bat and noticed a new line that says

    “The Terminal Services service is stopping…
    The Terminal Services service could not be stopped.”

    (5 minutes later:)

    Ok, I now see what the problem is but have absolutely no idea what to do. I went into Services and clicked on Terminal Services and then clicked “Stop the Service”. It took at least two minutes for the bar to go all of the way across and then it brought up an error saying:

    “Windows could not stop the terminal Services service on Local Computer.

    Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.”

    WHAT DO I DO?

    Also, should Terminal Services be running and set to automatic as well? Because it wasn’t before this ordeal, but I recently set it too to automatic. Good idea?

  76. At the end of my previous post, I meant to say Terminal Services CONFIGURATION at the end. Not Terminal Services. That was already started and on automatic. But the Terminal Services Configuration was stopped, so I recently started it and made it also be automatic. What does it do? Do I need it? Should I stop it?

  77. I used termsrv before SP1 and it worked, until I read this forum I did not know that SP1 could clobber RDP server, it did.
    Downloaded and ran termsrv.sp1 worked perfectly first time. RDP server is now working on my Vista Home Prem SP1.
    Thanks for the excellent work.

  79. cboy007, as i said, its getting weird.
    as the service is not stopping, i think that u shud try what i call a partial rollback of premium.bat
    notice the line in premium.bat

    :BACKUPTERMSRVDLL
    copy %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll %SystemRoot%\System32\*.*.bak

    so, replace the cracked version of termsrv.dll with ur original SP1 termsrv.dll (which is termsrv.dll.bak renamed to termsrv.dll).You might need to use safe mode for this operation.

    Now, in normal windows mode, check services.msc to see if u can start and then stop Terminal Services.If you succeed, try running premium.bat again.And report back if it works.

    Regarding the TRMSRV CONFIGURATION Service, windows shows that RDC doesn’t depend on it, but still i’m seeing it Enabled, Manual so, change it to manual and start it.

    Good luck…

  80. SUCCESS! Thanks to everyone here! Here’s what I did:

    I tried deleting the termsrv.dll file from the system folder but I got an error. So I then typed in command prompt and ran these commands:

    cd C:\Windows\System32
    ren termsrv.dll termsrvBAD.dll
    ren termsrvbackup.dll termsrv.dll

    I then went into services.msc and tried restarting the service (I never restarted computer), and I got the error..I don’t remember it but I got an error.

    After that, I saw that the Terminal Services was now STOPPED, so I simply ran the premium.bat as Administrator, and SUCCESS!

    I haven’t tested it yet, but according to the messages in the .bat, everything should work fine – it says its listening.

    Also, I followed Shantanu Tushar’s advice and turned Terminal Service Configuration to Started and I set it on Manual.

    Thanks again to everyone here! I hope this helps other people that have this problem!

  81. Just to clear a few things up, I am on Remote Desktop now. Also, for anyone wondering, I needed to restart for whatever reason after installing the patch in order for it to work. Now everything is working the same (or better) than it was than before SP1. Thanks for everyone’s help and if you have any problems/questions, email me at cboy007@gmail.com.

  82. cboy007 — great to know you got it working, too. And thanks for all the advice you are spreading!

  83. Hello,

    Is it possible to connect to my main account, rather than having to create an entire new account for remote desktop to connect to?

    I’m not a professional, however I have seen my co-workers remote into their main computers from home…

    So again, is it possible to connect to my main useraccount (while it’s logged in at home?)

    Thanks for the great tweak by the way 🙂

  84. Yes, you can. Infact, if you create a new account B while another account A is logged in, and you try RDC with account A, you’ll have to click “Yes” on a confirmation dialog at the computer (physically) that you (B) want to disconnect A’s session.
    So, in order to avoid this, try using RDC using same account that’s already logged in.

  85. Hi Shantanu,

    I found out that the problem was caused by the fact that my main account did not have a password on it. Vista refuses to allow a connection if an account is passworded.

    So i put a password on my main account, then tweaked Windows to allow auto-login (so i don’t have to log in when my computer turns on).

    Now remote desktop works fine…

    Thanks 🙂

  86. Please help….
    i encounter error as below when i try to connect Terminal server with Remote Desktop. i use Vista home premium

    Error message :
    The remote session was disconnected because there are no Terminal Server client access licenses available for this computer.
    Please contact the server administrator…

    After contact the server guy, they suggest i go REGEDIT , delete the Folder MSLicensing from Folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then restart my laptop.

    However, the same error prompt after i restart the laptop…

    Hope expert could help me on this…..

  87. FYI, i could connect successfully everytime…
    this error happens recently…i wonder whether due to Windows Update ??

  88. It’s working fine for me. Thanks Antonio for the advice about non-English versions. I had tried this hack before SP1, but didn’t work. I just discovered yesterday that it was an issue with port 3389, I had to change it. Maybe my ISP is blocking it, cause a couldn’t open it, but it works with another one.
    I just have one question, does this hack allow multiple concurrent connections? I need to access my home pc while i’m at work, but without disconnecting other users logged locally. I haven’t tried it yet, because there is nobody at home right now, but what I have discovered is that I cannot change to another user (at the remote pc) while using remote desktop.
    Thanks frans! GREAT JOB 🙂

  89. I have Home Premium in Italian, and the program gave errors “Terminal server not found” on stopping and starting the service. I solved by opening premium.bat and substituing “Terminal Server” with “Servizi terminal”. It’s a shame they used language-specific strings to identify services.

  90. For the persons of which RDP is not listening: is the port 3389 open in your (Windows) firewall AND router ?

  91. OMG, I battled this all day and then found this page. It was fixed within 30 seconds after finding this page. THANK YOU!

  92. I was frustrated too that I could not remote from my laptop with vista premiun to my desktop with ultimate. I could remote the other way of course.
    Last night I forwarded udp and tcp ports 3389 on my router using the desktops address and was able to remote to my desktop from my laptop using the free rdc download from microsoft.
    Hope this helps someone else.

  93. I experienced the same things that most have indicated in this blog. RDT worked before, then it didn’t after SP1 install. The patch (termsrv_SP1.zip) that frons offers seems to work well if done properly, though. The one thing that I notice most people are missing is:
    1. You need to copy the new termsrv.dll file to the c:\Windows\System32 directory. In most cases you can not do this because the service is already running or you need to take ownership of the termsrv.dll file in order to have permission to rename it. In short, follow the directions below and type the commands in SAFE MODE. Good luck and I it works for you. I found this originally at – http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1220&Itemid=232 – But don’t use the files on this page because they are the Pre-SP1 tweak.
    1. Now, Vista’s security needs a little massaging to allow you to modify the original termsrv.dll file, found in C:\Windows\System32, so….
    2. Click Start, then type “cmd” in the search box & hit enter. This will launch the Command prompt
    Type the following & hit enter:
    takeown /f C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
    3. Then type this & hit enter (NOTE: Replace USERNAME with YOUR USERNAME!! If your name has a space in it, enclose it with quotes, like “Mike Garcen”):
    cacls C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll /G USERNAME:F
    4. Then go to your Windows Explorer, and go to C:\Windows\System32 – Rename the original termsrv.dll to something else, like “termsrv.dll.ORIGINAL”, just in case
    *NOTE* If you are unable to do the above, try rebooting into SAFE MODE
    Then copy & paste the Hacked DLL into the C:\Windows\System32 folder
    And voila!

  95. Hi,

    Thanks for guide, it worked perfect for me. But i have a problem.

    I can’t seem to get file transfer to work. I’ve enabled file transfer, and selected the appropriate HDD’s, but they don’t show up on my remote computer.

    Does it not work with this hack?

    Thanks.

  97. ……..and are you remoting in from a work PC on a domain, because there may be Network secuity that pevents you from doing that. Need more details.

  98. Dear dude, Thanks so much for making this and putting it into a easy file to run. I am running Skype autoanswer as a skype conference server for about 30 gaming buddies. This allows me to remote desktop multiple times into my vista basic box, running multiple skype instances, and manage the callers. I’ve got a single box serving 30 skype callers at once.

    I did have to run the script as administrator to make it work properly..

    Again THANKS!

  99. AaronHolio, do not thank me, thank everyone who has contributed in making this hack possible. =) Jarrett001, thanks for providing an alternative setup procedure. For me, the SP1_patch worked fine without any extra steps, but those might be necessary in some cases, though.

  100. Access denied problem can be solved by setting read permission for termsrv.dll for USERS GROUP

  102. Just want to let you know….the advise given on this website is great. Thanks all!

  103. Thanks for all your help, I can RDP into my Vista box. How do add a Standard user to the remote users group under Vista Home premium? Currently, only admin level users can only connect through TS sessions.

  104. @trobs
    I don’t think it works on Vista Basic
    @Vas
    Currently, as you know, we can’t access the permissions dialog for RDC, because though it works, we’re still unable to get the RDC section in System>Remote tab. So, with the info we currently have, u can’t grant RDC permission to standard users

  105. Thank you very much. I applied the batch file for Vista Home Premium in an SP1 installation, using the new file, followed the simple instructions on the beginning of this thread, and it worked like a charm (I just need an extra step: allow port 3389 for the notebook in my router). I am typing this from a remote connection TO my notebook!! Thank you again for your kindness in sharing your knowledge.

  108. Pingback: The Obsessed Programmer » Blog Archive » Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) Server in Vista Home Premium

  109. Hello everyone,
    I have a windows vista home premium SP1 computer and a macbook pro. I downloaded the RDC for mac. How can I connect to my windows vista home premium computer? I have tried the patch as described above. Maybe the patch does something else? Also, the mac and the pc aren’t on the same network. I try to connect from the mac to the pc using “192.168.1.5” thing. What should I do?

    Thanks,
    ILoveIsrael.

  110. Using the sp1 patch file worked like a charm on the first try!

    MANY thanks!

  111. Hi, i followed the steps above and it works in my Vista Home Premium. However, I get no audio output device is installed. I wonder anyone having this problem.

  112. I get no audio either. There are some other funky issues too like syncing my PDA while the system is connected via RDC. It won’t work.

  113. engowen -> I also have this same problem, no audio device when connected. I haven’t tried to find a solution (if at all possible) because I mostly don’t care about it but I understand that having no audio may frustrate some people.

    roderic -> why in this world are you syncing your PDA via RDC? (just kidding 🙂

  114. When I try to SYNC the PDA – if I have connected RDC from my laptop and then try to sync the PDA it will not sync up. I have to disconnect the RDC and then it will work.

  115. About PDASync, try Options>Local Resources>More and deselect everything (including Clipboars in Local Resources dialog).

    Audio, i think it might be a limitation of this crack.

  116. Here are two more “little issues” that I have with my RDC:

    1 – Although I set color depth to 24 bit, I only get 16 bit when connected.

    2 – Although I set up username and password, I always end up starting at the login screen of Vista, and so the information is not actually used.

    I don’t know if these issues are really issues or if they are supposed to happen when RDC’ing from a Windows XP to a Windows Vista. Also, I believe that issue “1” may be due to lack of support of my notebook’s video card for this specific situation (the video card is pretty capable of 32 bit color when in regular use though).

    Again, these two issues don’t bother me, considering that the other options would be not to have RDC to the notebook at all or pay $160 to upgrade to the Ultimate version.

  117. You saved me a lot of trouble.
    Thanks for this (lets call it) VISTA FIX.
    Its stupid of microsoft of cutting their own products. Money sure can make do some crazy stuff…

  118. Works perfectly for my Home Premium SP1 Portuguese (Brazil) version.

    I had to do small changes on the premium.bat because of administrator and service name translations.

    Also I had to open manually the port3389 in the windows firewall. Probably because of translations the patch did not open automaticaly.

    Thanks!!!!!

  120. Marcelo, could you send me your modified premium.bat? I want to install it in a PT-BR Vista Premium also. Obrigado!

    email = av at ig dot com dot br

    And I found another little issue that may be related to this. Whenever I connect TO the notebook, after, when I log to the notebook without being in a remote session, USB mouse is not working. I need to disconnect and reconnect the mouse.

  121. Hi!

    I’ve been trying to get this to work for som hours now and when i finally came around the errors in the install of termsrv by reinstalling windows the next problem appeard. When i connect from 32-bit Vista Business laptop to my HTPC (Home premium 64-bit) either by entering the htpc IP or computer name i get to enter my username (“Fredrik” nothing else right) and password for my account on the HTPC witch is the as my username and password on my laptop(Shouldn’t mather???) but then NOTHING happens the connection button fades out for a couple of seconds but that’s it. My computers are behind the same router, in the same workgroup, the port in the firewall is open… I just don’t understand it??? It drives me crazy! I dinät even get an error message

  122. I’ve been trying to get this to work on my Vista premium 64 sp1 for some hours, and when I finally came around the errors and the install of termsrv, I get the problem that:

    “service is not listening”

    and windows firewall is enabled on port 3389

  124. It works fine to me. Im using Vista SP1 on HP pavilion.
    Just used premium.bat and every thing goes OK

  127. Just to note to others that may be having troubles with this, ensure you have downloaded Service Pack 1. I tried without service pack 1 and this didn’t work for me. Terminal Services never respond during the check when running the batch file.

  128. Thisworked fine for me first go on HomePremium.

    I rebooted and now it will not work again.

    The TS service is running, restarted it, but still no luck.

  129. As some of you found out, the batch files does only do well on english Vista versions. To make the batch files language independent, change the line with the icacls command to:

    icacls %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll /Grant S-1-5-32-544:F

    And the lines with net start/stop “Terminal Services” to:
    net start TermService
    or
    net stop TermService

    After the changes, the batch file worked on my German Vista Home Premium.

  131. Thanks James! That made all the difference for me and my swedish edition.
    But I had to add a * in the line to. The line should look like this:
    icacls %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll /Grant *S-1-5-32-544:F

  132. This works beautifully on Vista Premium SP1, even with Media Center.

    I cannot thank enough Frans and all the others who contributed!

  133. Hey guys , I had to post here because this hack apparently broke my WINKEY + L shortcut, which I used extensively at the office to lock my PC when I get up.

    Interestingly, even if I use the LOCK command in the start menu , nothing happens!! The only way I can lock the PC is by using “switch user” in the start menu , which I am not able to resume from!!

    I don’t know how to fix this problem yet but I am researching it currently.

    Although RDP works , I NEED my winkey + L shortcut!!

  135. After reading all of the comments I believe that I have a diferent problem.
    Login has administrator when i connect to a XP host i can do everything normal, but if I login has a user the shift key, the ctrl key and the selection with the mouse stop working. What can it be?
    Thanks

  136. Hi. I need to uninstall the remote desktop. I install it with the termsrv.zip. Its a Vista Home Premium.
    Could you help me?
    sds

  137. Have you got a hacked .dll version for Ultimate SP1, for the concurrent RDP connections? I had one for pre-SP1, but I have not checked if it works with SP1.

  138. Hi to all!

    I’ve been following your comments, (all great BTW) but my problem is that once I copied the new DLL, I am not able to start the Terminal Services service.

    I can start it, but 5 seconds after, it turns down.

    I have Vista Home Premium in spanish.

    Any idea?

    Regards,
    Negron

  140. Thanks Man!!! Your a life and time saver!!!! I got it working at first and after awhile it just went dead, don’t know why, but i just guess thats vista for yah. great job tho

  141. Pingback: PCTechSpot » Blog Archive » Remote Desktop With Vista Home Premium

  142. I also had a problem with Premium SP1. premium.bat claimed all the times that service is not listening. So basically what I did was:

    1. Ran premium.bat as administrator
    2. Curse for a while that nothing is working
    3. Went to Safe Mode
    4. Copied termsrv.dll included in the ‘hack’ to System32
    5. Booted to normal windows mode and voila!

    Hope this helps someone.

  143. Pingback: Biesma.net » Vista Home Premium Remote Desktop

  144. **FIXED ** ALT had it right… You are a stud dude that worked.

    I was banging my head against this for the last hour.

    Go to safemode copy the dll reboot and all is finally good. Nice job.

  145. Any chance there is an X64 version of this new DLL out there somewhere. Thanks.

    Don

    Windows Vista Hom Premium x64

  146. Man, this is truly cool. After updating to SP1, I ran the batch file as administrator.
    The only thing I had to do afterwards was to enable port 3389 on the windows firewall.

    Works perfectly.

  148. FOR NON ENGLISH-OS USERS

    i didn’t read all the comments but I’ve found the script fails if it’s run on non-english Vista since it tries to stop a service that has a different name.
    So you have to manually stop the terminal services (in italian called “servizi terminal”), run the script and restart the service.

  150. Just tried termsrv_sp1.zip on Vista Home Premium. Yes, the hack works…though… CPU goes to 100% being taken by LogonUI process…. 😦
    Anybody else having this performance issue?

  151. Well, does it behave like that always, or only sometimes?
    Are you on a corporate network?

  152. OK, after more experiments I have found out it is problem with Veriface (face recognition on Lenovo notebooks) which is part of Logon process. This is my updated observation:
    1. (with Veriface on) LoginUI sometimes hanged for good, sometimes it dropped off after 1 minute or so.
    2. (with Veriface off) things are OK.

  153. Yes, i forgot, i have the same problem when i try to show RDC to my friends who have Lenovo notebooks.
    Veriface shouldn’t pop-out on RDC, it doesn’t make too much sense…

  154. You are my hero. Thank you soooo much for providing this. It worked flawlessly for me. Bye bye pcanywhere, VNC, and all other junk.

    THANK YOU!!!!

  155. Hi! anyone has the original termsrv.dll for Home Premium with SP1? I execute two times the premium.bat cause the first time don’t work, so my .bak was lost! I was a complete stupid 😦

    Thanks and best regards!

  156. Hi,

    I seem to have tried everything and the latest issue is that it is copying the file Ok but is failing to PROCESS it.

    Can ANYONE help me???

    I have been reading this thread and working on this for nearly 4 hours now.

    Thanks

  157. And now its also saying that the service is not listening even though i disabled UAC and set up the port forward on the router and put an exemption in the firewall.

    What does it want from me!

  158. Pingback: Enable Remote Desktop Connections on Vista Home - Lonewolf Online
  159. Pingback: Brielle's Ramblings

  160. Frans, thanks for this! Now I don’t have to buy an expensive upgrade for my vista laptop to be able to remotely control it 🙂

  161. Thank you for the updated files for Vista HP sp1.
    This was the first solution I have found that works.
    I am one very happy camper now, as I can remotely access my home pc now when I am on the road.

    Thanks again

  162. it doesn’t work on vista 64 but only on vista 32
    is there anyone who have the termsvr.dll patched for vista 64 ?

  163. Frans
    Thank you soo much. I tried a few of the other tweaks, and this one worked perfectly. Thanks again.

    Dan

  164. Ah, is there something I’m missing:
    Vista Home Premium SP1
    Used the bat ‘premium.bat’ above (everything was ok)
    Router was setup for port 3389 to go to my IPv4 IP address (router location)
    I try to connect to my IP from ipchicken.com
    Enter user and password
    Nothing happens for a while
    “Computer cannot connect to remote computer” error

    Questions:
    Am I trying the correct computer in Remote Desktop?
    When I’m simply putting user and pass, no computer identifier, is that correct?
    I have the default Windows firewall, should I worry about the port being blocked there?

  165. WOW, it worked. I thank all of you guys who thought of this issue, you are my life savers.

  166. Found this issue, it was my firewall. Had to add 3389 to the exception list by hand because the remote items didn’t cover it. (see post above)

  167. I have applied this on my Vista Home Premium but now when I reboot I get “DNS Client” “Stopped working” in the Problems report. Also, my wireless network always shows disconnected even though it is connected. How do I remove this patch from my system to see if the problem goes away?

  168. Well, i had the same problem when i tried to apply this patch without SP1, did you do the same?
    Anyway, i did a system restore and the problem got solved.
    I don’t think there’s an easy way to “uninstall” this batch file.

  169. Just can’t get this to work?

    Vista Home Premium SP1
    Used the bat ‘premium.bat’ above (everything seems ok?).
    Remote Desktop Service is running and listning
    Firewall exeption i setup to TCP port 3389.
    Router is setup to forward 3389 to go to Vista machine.

    I try to remote desktop from my XP laptop to my Vista machine:
    Enter my IP
    Enter user and password
    And nothing happens – after 15 seconds the “connect button” gets “normal” again and I can try again – but no error message?

  170. But what about concurrent sessions? I had a patch that enabled this pre-sp1, but after installing the service pack, it stopped working. re-installing the original patch completely broke remote desktop. Does this patch allow concurrent sessions?

  171. Ok,
    The sp1_zip work fine with vista ultimate sp1 -32
    (BTW, you probably do not want to use a 32bit dll for a 64 bit system)

    I had the same problem as some of you, the service not listining on 3389.

    I think it is because the script cannot shutdown the service properly. When I tried to do it manually it hanged in “stopping”.

    Solution:
    1) Disable the service
    2) re-boot
    3) Enable the service again (automatic) – Enable NOT start..
    4) right-click on script and do “run as admin”

    You we see that the script now manage to start the service and it does also listen. viola

    I am have also earlier disabled UAC…Do not know if it matters.

  172. the problem seems to be in the firewall…
    tried disabling it, and connected fine.. reenabled it, and it was a no go…

    then added the port manualy, and now it works even with the firewall enabled.

  173. Warning:

    Tried this on a clean install of Dutch Home Premium sp1. After applying the patch some kind of hosts process crashes, followed by the dns client service, local network awareness service and the terminal services service.

  175. Sorry to reask. Anyone has the original termsrv.dll for Home Premium with SP1?

    Thanks and best regards!

  176. ninguno: If you google: vista_concurrent_rdp_sessions.rar

    you will find a torrent, it contains the original file as well as the fix for sp0. (which do not work for sp1).

    I assume that the original file cannot be just copied back to system32. You have to adapt the filenames and/or the script to put back the file in the same way as the fix was applied.

    +++

    Regarding users and autostart MCE:

    By the default users with no password (blank) cannot login via RDP. This can be changed in local security policy. But you shouldn’t.

    Create a separate user for RDP. It should be in admin or in the RDP group.
    You do not want to use RDP with the same user that run MCE anyway.

    To allow for auto login with the user with blank pwd, go to local security policy and deny local login for the rdp user. This user will now not appear in the login screen.

    //J

  177. Hi, i followed the steps above and it works in my Vista Home Premium. However, I get no audio output device is installed. Is there a solution to this probelm?

  179. file transfer doesn’t work….tried the whole options, resources, disk drives thing doesn’t work. i don’t see my drives in “my computer” etc. could it be cause im connecting from an XP computer at work remotely to my home vista premium machine at home? any thoughts on getting file transfer working?

  180. Wow… this works. However the wow was @ me!

    Yes, that’s right, I used the SP1 link for a pre SP1 Vaio laptop. Working fine now.

    If you get services dying left right and centre, that’s why! Duh.

    Cheers for this, you’re a hero.

  181. I did this on Vista Home Premium.. Now I don’t know what to do next 😛 I’m very new to remote networking.. Not sure if I should be opening the Pre-Installed Remote Desktop Connection.. or what to do! Any help or links to a good site on the whole shebang would be nice.

    Thanks

  183. I’ve been trying for months to remote my VIsta Premium from my XP but every time I tried I got Blocked
    this time with this patch it worked and thanks alot for the efforts man.

  184. Hi – Thanks for coming out with this patch. The SP1 patch worked nicely on my Vista Home Premium SP1 box.

    Thanks again!

  186. I have a new laptop and followed the directions, but it still will not let me connect. I downloaded the files from the link from the article at the top as well as the one way at the top. The .dll is copied. The firewall port 3389 with tcp was added. I am on a hardwire ethernet with a computer that can connect. Is there some goofy thing I need to disable? Symantic was on this computer, but I don’t think it is installed. What am I missing? Is there some debugging I can do?

    Thanks

  187. At the end of the batch file it looks to see if the tcp port is listening. Did it report that it was working?

  189. Hi – just fund this and have worked through many of the issues.

    I now have the hacked Termsrv.dll for SP1, and have an admin ac with psw, and a “Viewing” account psw free.
    So I am running MCE from the viewing a/c.

    However, on my other PC, when I fire up RD, it says that there are no computers on the workgroup containing terminal servers.

    what have I missed?

  190. I just pointed RD to the IP address of my Vista/SP1 computer and it worked. Have you tried just using the IP?

  191. Thanks to Tom for suggesting I use the IP Address – workes beautifully – thanks so much guys……

  192. I figured out my problem. The RDC has an advanced tab that has server authenitication in it. I selected “connect and don’t warn me” and it now connects. I am not sure if I needed this fix or not since I only use it as a client. The port 3389 addition information in the firewall was useful, though.

  193. Hi

    First of all thanks to all of you who develped the patch, put on network and then are supporting the process of applying (including those who reply on this list).

    I have vista Home premium with sp1.
    I installed the patch and now I can access the vista machine remotely using my xp machine’s RDP (ie. I can see that XP’s RDP try to connect to Vista machine) but cannot authenticate.

    This is what I am doing, when I provide the user name and password I get “access is denied” message. I created new account on Vista machine with Administrator privilages. but same message “access is denied”.

    Any clues what did I miss? What do I need to do on the Vista side that it will allow me to RDP?

  194. ran the .reg file, followed step 3 from post 26, make sure you click “y” in command prompt to accept the changes and YEAH!!! I can now remote to my desktop home prem sp1 from my laptop xp pro sp3. THANX EVERYONE!

  195. @VistaUser
    In RDC on XP, leave username and password blank, then connect. If you do this, can you see the Vista login screen coming on your XP machine?

  196. Hey guys, thanks for the hack.

    However… if you go run ‘mstsc’ the Remote Desktop Console will run.

    So, what does this hack do, because I am able to use RDP with Vista Home Premium without any reg hack.

    Thoughts?

  197. okay i ran the patch, added the ports, but diddnt know how to actually use remote desktop, so i kept reading and came across the mstsc thing right above me, and typed that in. brought up a fancy looking window, i typed in the name of the computer on the network i wish to connect to and it told me this “This computer cant connect to the remote computer.” my network works fine i access files all the time but are still new to this whole remote desktop thing… any very detailed directions would be greatly appreciated

  198. Pingback: Clearance » Blog Archive » Remote Desktop for Vista Home Premium

  199. Tanashanu

    My problem seems to be security issue and not network Since I am able to get prompt via RDP & via telnet to the vista machine; here is the netstat output.

    C:\Users\Downloads\Hacks>netstat -a | find /i “3389”
    TCP 0.0.0.0:3389 OurPC:0 LISTENING
    TCP [::]:3389 OurPC:0 LISTENING

    My problem however is that when I connect via mstsc.exe it gives me the access denied message. I am wondering if its the windows policy that I must adjust so it will be me get in remotely.

    But I am not sure how to view/edit permissions/policies in Windows Vista Preminum (HOme Edition).

    Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks a lot.

  200. Wow! You guys are amazing! I was very disappointed when I read Microsoft’s docs saying that Remote Desktop Sharing is not available in Vista Home Premium. Then I found you guys. I simply download as per Frans in post 57, then ran the ‘premium’ batch file as Administrator, as per Jimbo’s instructions in post 35, and voila… instant Desktop Sharing in 2 minutes, without so much as a reboot! Fantastic. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  201. you are awesome. I live in a small apartment, and my computer (tower based) is across the room where i can see it. but I just wanted to log into it from my wife laptop, anywhere from the couch, from the bed.

    you solved my problem. I should spend time on google before i go start scewing with networking properties.

  204. I am using Vista Home Premium with SP1.
    Aded the Sp1 patch inside the termsrv_sp1 folder.
    Done all the steps with no error message.
    But i cannot see the options which are available on vista ultimate for remote desktop. Now how do I configure my Vista laptop so that I can use it from my XP desktop? Any help would be appreciated.

  205. Awesome! after just a few hours of messing about caused mostly by my own ignorance I have finally been able to remote desktop from my HTC TYTN 2 onto my vista SP1 desktop. Incase you are having any of the troubles I was having this is what I did:

    firstly you need to add a firewall exception if you are running anyting but windows built in firewall – this must allow incoming connections (listening) on port 3389 using a tcp connection

    while you are at it you may as well configure your router to forward all incoming connections for TCP 3389 to the desktop you want to connect to. to do this you will need to go into your routers configuration page which can usually be accessed through a web browser by inputting the IP address of your router which can be found on the bottom of the device itself ( usually 192.168.0.1 for Netgear routers). You will then need to add a service: in this case we are adding a service for incoming connections on TCP 3389 (starting and ending on 3389). When the service is made we need to apply it by going into firewall rules and adding it an inbound serviceby selecting add> select the service you just made in the last step>allow it always>send to LAN server ( this is the local IP address of your pc which you can find out by pressing the windows button+R> type cmd> type ipconfig and look for IPv4 address), then select to apply the rule back in the routers config page.

    Then, download the file at the top of this page and follow the instuctions. unzip the file to your hard drive (somewhere like c:\downloads\termsvr_sp1, so its easy to find)
    To run the batch file click start and type cmd into the search bar, right click the cmd icon and select run as administrator, then navigate to the correct folder ( in my case the command was:
    cd\ (to return to the root directory)
    cd downloads\termsvr_sp1
    premium (or whichever version you are installing for)

    This runs a script which enables remote desktop connection listening by replacing an original .dll file with a new one (you will see what it is doing as the script runs – it will tell you here what processes have suceeded and which have failed) at the end it will check to see if your computer is listening on port 3389 (the port used for remote desktop connection which you have configured through your firewall and told your router to pass any incoming connection of this type to this PC). with any luck it should say at the end of the script that your pc IS listening on those ports.

    To check this is all OK you can type netstat -a into cmd and this will list what all the ports are up to. you can also check that the new terminal services .dll is running in vista by going into control panel, searching for services from control panel home view and opening that as an administrator and looking at the terminal services processes to see if they are started or not – there are a few services heer you should check both terminal services and remote connection.

    you will need to have a user account password setup for your administrator account and you will log into that from your phone.

    I then went to dyndns.com and created a free account so I could find and connect to my home PC using a more memorable method than trying to remember my external IP address. so I created a ‘link’ which looked something like mehomecomputer.dyndns.org and this would point anything looking there to my home router, which in turn through your firewall rules will point it in the direction of the pc you are trying to connect to.

    Ok for the phone part of it I downloaded this – http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/attachments/ppc-6700-xv6700/10303d1171200207-wm6_rdp-mobile-remote-desktop-client-wm6-rdp-finster.zip
    then unzipped the file to my hard drive, then copied the .cab file on to phone, ran the .cab file on the phone and installed the programme to the device itself (not the storage card) this installed a new icon into my programms folder – remote desktop for windows mobile. I then did a soft reset on the phone (never sure if I am ment to but it doesn’t hurt after installing new stuff!)
    When you run remote desktop connection on your phone it wants to know 4 things:
    Computer – this is the computer you want to connect to which I am identifiying by the dyndns name (myhomecomputer.dyndns.org or whatever you made)
    Username and password – this is the username and password you use to log into your pc while actually sitting infront of it – the same ones will be used when your not sitting infront of it too!
    Domain – I left this blank but if I do need to fill it in for any reason I will be back here to tell you all about it

    you can mess with the setting here too but then when you connect it should bring up your vista desktop on your HTC phone and with a good network conenction it is amazingly fast – I have yet to try it on GPRS or from a different router but this worked for me.

    Good luck!

  206. Cres,

    Since you have done so much research already, could you help me figure out how to get audio from RDP connection? I managed to get my vista premium act as a Host and I am able to use my xp desktop client to connect to vista premium host machine. Only problem, no audio even though I checked the bring over audio option on the client. There is a setting called Audio Mapping that needs to be enabled and its on the terminal server config. Unfortunately, vista premium does not have that utility. Nor do I know which registry entry to change for this. Any idea? I would love to get the Audio brought over from my vista premium host.

    Thanks
    V

  209. Hurrah….

    Finally I am able to use both my Xp pro SP2 and Vista Home Premium SP1 as both client and host for remote desktop….

    tips : if you are not able to conect through user name/computer name then try through your IP.

    run ipconfig command in cmd to get your IP

  210. Vinny,

    sorry mate can’t help you there I use RDC purely as an administrative tool, when I want to get media from another pc I use ORB its free and you can access it from anywhere through a webpage (so your ps3, xbox, phone, laptop anything!)

  211. cres,

    Thanks. I do use Orb for media streaming to my xbox. Still thought it would be nice to get the audio mapping working. Guess what I have now is better than nothing after all…

    V

  212. Hi to all the developers and patch makes you work is great although after reading through this thread for 3 days now and trying all the techniques mentioned i cant seem to get remote desktop working.

    here is what i have done.

    i have 2 laptops in my network both running vista home premium sp1.

    i downloaded the files above with the patched dll for sp1 and opened cmd promt with admin rights and executed the premium batch file this goes all well on both machines with no fails.

    i them open remote desktop in vista type the name of the other laptop it then procedes to ask me for username and password which i enter and alls i get is your credentials are not right lonon failed i tried vice versa from the other laptop and the same there i tried the ip’s of the machines and get the same.

    i have opened ports and enabled remote and also opened the port in windows firewall but no matter how much i do or read i cant get it working.

    in the original scenario of having untimate under remote settings it has a tab for users should we have this section once patched as i dont?

  213. Joe,

    you do nopt get the extra remote desktop settings which you can view in sharing as you might with ultimate, it just works! Have you tried changing you passwords on both machines and try that? I have read somewherre that unless you have password protected accounts which use the login screen you will not be able to use remote desktop – not sure if this is true as I do use password protected accounts

  214. Oh update on using remote desktop from a mobile phone (htc tytn2) I have not used it on GPRS and it it amazingly fast! just a pain to navigate a large sreen 1440 x 900 from a very small one 320 x 200!

  216. U can even use accounts without any password to connect to RDP. (this doesn’t work on premium though, it works on business and ultimate)
    Goto Start>Run>gpedit.msc then goto Security settings (u have to find that in the Local Settings at the left, i dont remember xactly) and then find “Limit blank password use on console login only” and set it to “Disabled”.Now u can login with blank password.

  217. Hi cres yes i have tried with and without passwords i have also tried different usernames and different passwords i am lost with ideas now

  219. woohooo got it working i forwarded port 3389 in my router to my machine i waant to control and viola although i am sure i tried that already it worked this time 🙂

    now to set up rying to get it to work via a dns :S

  220. The patch works on all versions of windows vista just as long as you apply it in safe mode then is all good

  221. Help! After some tweaking, I thought I had it, but not quite…

    Vista home premium sp1; trying to connect from vista home basic. Installed the patch, created a new admin user with a password. When I try to log in with that user the screen flashes, but then nothing happens… it just goes back to the front screen of the RDP client.

    The service is running and I don’t think it’s a firewall problem… if I give it credentials for a non-admin, it says not authorized and if I give it a bad password, it says “credentials did not work”, so it’s clearly connecting at least enough to validate the credentials, but it won’t start the session.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks!

  223. I have the bug now 🙂 i have 2 laptops and 2 pcs in my home and i now have my main laptop connecting to all machines this is such a good thing i can sit in my arm chair and control all pc;s although i seem to find myself logging onto them just for the sake of it with nothing to do on them but i am sure there will come a time when i need to lol

  224. can anyone advise how i do this from a remote location other than my network i have set up a dyndns address and put the details into my router and enabled it but not sure what to do next any help much appreciated.

  225. I got it work on my Vista 64bit. connecting to it using xp, I found the 64bit patch and installed it, port foward 3389 on my router AND Vista’s firewall.

    Works fine for me, Many, Many thanks!

    and don’t forget to check your router and Vista firewalls for the port.

  226. Jo.
    Get yourself a free no-ip account for ease from no-ip.com this logs your ip and gives it your chosen name. go out to a remote location and open remote desktop. now enter http://yourname.no-ip.biz in the box and connect. if your broadband provider gives you a static IP address then just use that.
    To find out your IP search the net for whats my IP do this from the PC you are going to connect to.
    The key is you need your internet IP address and not your network ip.
    Turbo.

  227. Hi Jonte. Thanks, yes I have that file, but I need the orginal termsrv.dll for SP1, not for SP0. anyone has made a backup of it and could send that to mail email address? (soloninguno@hotmail.com)

    Thank you very much!

  228. all sorted i used a dyndns address as i have used these in the past and now connecting remotly to a xp home machine and a vista machine from whereever i want using my mobile broadband connection pretty cool 🙂

    p.s if you have more than 1 machine connected to your network and want to remote connect to them from away from home you must change the port of the machines as you can not port forward more than 1 ip to a port unless you have unpn port forwarding of course

  230. anyone got file transfer working ?

    other than signing into msn and sending i would have thought i could transfer via the remote connection

  231. Joe on the pc you are connecting FROM click your remote desktop connection but don’t connect. click the options button which brings up a larger box. Click the local resourses tab there is may be local drives there or click the more button and tick the drives on the connecting pc you want to include.
    Now when you connect the remote PC will have in my computer its drives and your drives on your connecting pc. now just drag and drop your files on the remote pc…..BUT it can be slow. Email or MSN works for small files, on large files I have set a FTP server using IIS (IIS is in all Vistas depite what you read) I copy and paste the file to the ftp folder then close the connection and use IE to collect it.

  232. I too am trying to run RDP on my laptop with Vista Home Premium – SP1. I have installed the termsrv.dll patch as described previously – and it install just fine. The 4489 port is set up fine also, as it claims also that it can listen through that. I can log onto my remote site OK, but then when it tries to perform the synchronize, it quits with the message “Failed to sync”. I have the latest Java loaded (our remote RDP is based on the open SSL-Explorer). I’ve tried tons of things trying to get past this point…but no luck yet. What is going on?

  234. It would be very useful if you could release this same package with the terminal .dll’s for vista premium 64-bit. I just got a new 64 bit machine and really would appreciate this working

  236. Would anyone care to elaborate on step 4 for me? I was fine with all the other steps but am clueless here What is and how do I run a batch file for my edition of Vista? I’m just a lay person with limited geek capabilities. I’d really appreciate if anyone could help me get my remote desktop up and running. Thanks so much.

  237. I think I have a voodoo system here. I have a Home Premium 64 machine on which this worked. But it’s not working on my Home Premium 32 system. No matter which way I go about applying the hack, the result is the same: the termserv service quits after a few seconds of being launched. I can see it happen, just by opening the service’s properties page and starting it manually. Anyone else solved this issue or might know what’s wrong?

  238. Pingback: Vista Remote Desktop Client | JRH Imaging LTD

  240. This is a great hack and all comments here were a BIG help. I can now RD my Advent Laptop through my G5… If only I could get File sharing to work properly. Could it be because certain functions are locked out of vista home premium, and I would need a seperate hack to file share through RDC? I wonder.

  242. I did this and when it starts to run I get a system error.

    “system error 193 has occurred.
    *** is not a valid Win32 application.

    Then it never starts to listen.

  243. Seems like the patch working nomore due to recent MS sp1 update. Anyone figured out to RD again?

  245. yeah guys, i think there is a NEW ISSUE with some of the windows updates.

    I had the non-sp1 Vista hack working perfectly for about 6 months

    I installed some recent updates (BUT NOT SP1) and now it seems to not work any more….this happened this past weekend i guess but i didn’t notice it until today.

    when i try to run the process again, it seems the RDP client that would listen on 3389 just won’t start

    I tried manually starting the 2 terminal services services and still, netstat -a does not show it (yes i have it on port 3389 in registry)

    surely there is something new going on here with relationship to vista updates and it’s just beginning to be seen… however, i am not sure a new dll is going to do much since the issue appears to be that the service won’t start?

    anyone got more info?

  246. I can’t get it to work on Vista Home Premium 64bit 😦 I had it working perfectly in Vista 32

  248. How to get ride off the 1079 Error

    I got the error and tried to fix it , found an article that stated that you should set the service back to Network service without password .

    this didnt help at al the only thing that helped whas going back to one of my first restore points , the original files kame back ( even the SP1 gone )

    downloaded the file for normal ( not SP1 )
    installed and now working without the 1079 Error .

    i think i aint going to update the vista , exept maby the sp1 only and try it with the SP1 file of the hacked term services dll file .

    hope this helps for the guy’s with the 1079 error .

    greetz

  249. This does not work for Vista Home Premium 64bit. Only 32bit. Tip needs to be added to instructions so peeps aren’t scratching their head after following the instructions. 🙂

  251. Eey all,

    I’ve got a little problem. I tried this hack but it didn’t work out. So i replaced to old .dll file and went on from there. I didn’t made a reg backup (which is stupid i know). Now when i try to connect from my xbox360 to my pc it doenst work. And i think it has something to do with the register (i did read it somewhere.. forgot where). Does anybody here know how to fix this or what to change in the register that it returns to it’s old settings ?

    With kind regard,

    Joey

  252. My sessions keep freezing up. Is anyone else experiencing these problems? Can anyone confirm if they have gotten this to work after the latest batch of MS updates as of Oct. 6, 2008?

  255. Hi, I stuck at step 2.
    step 3 onward i don’t how to do it. can someone teach me ?

    1. Download termsrv.zip here
    2. Extract Termsrv.zip to a temp directory

    3. Start “Command Prompt” in Administrator mode (Run As Administrator)
    4. Run the corresponding batch file for your Vista edition
    5. Allow TCP Port 3389 on Windows Firewall or any other firewall product.
    6. Done

  256. I have premium sp1 on my desktop pc and followed the posted steps and did a little bit more. After that, it worked like charm.
    1. Download termsrv_sp1.zip
    2. Extract Termsrv.zip to a temp directory
    3. Start “Command Prompt” in Administrator mode (Run As Administrator)
    4. Run the corresponding batch file for your Vista edition
    5. Allow TCP Port 3389 on Windows Firewall or any other firewall product.
    6. Done

    Extra steps that I did:
    1. Assigned my desktop pc that is wire connected to my router static IP address (within the range allowed by my router).
    2. Configured my router to forward port 3389 to my desktop pc that is wire connected to my router.

    After that, I could remote log into my desktop from my laptop (OS xp) within my home network. Plus, I could also remote log into my desktop from my office, provided that I had to use my router IP address (recognized by the internet) instead of the local IP address assigned by my router (as shown when typing in ipconfig /all in cmd).

    Thanks everyone for putting the time and efforts in making this happen.

  258. Pingback: WhatIThink » Blog Archive » Enabling Remote Desktop Connection in Vista Home Premium

  259. Wow, I’m amazed that Windows Vista Home doesn’t come with Remote Desktop capability. I’m also suprised at how much effort has to go into getting it working (and then the problems that come up with the Vista updates). UAC, by the way, tends to get disabled by users in order to eliminate all the “Are you sure you want to run it?” interference, so disabling UAC really isn’t a big deal.

    I use TightVNC with Windows XP, and have been on the search for a decent VNC server that will run on Vista (the folks I support find the UltraVNC eyeball uncomfortable to look at, otherwise I’d just use UltraVNC).

    I hope that some day there will be a free alternative to RDP that will use the same protocol so that clients can interchange between the free and the Microsoft versions without any difficulties, and then it will be so easy to get remote control support on any Windows machine.

  260. Great !!! With sp1 ultimate and the good dll, in french. Change “administrateur” and “Services Terminal Server”. Just i dont find any explication on SINGLESESSION and BLANK. But i expect what they do. The best hack i see since a long time. Felicitation to your team.

  263. Beware – I downloaded the patch and happily used it for a couple of months – fantastic! I work as a programmer so I am pretty concious of MS updates etc, which I always manually update. However MS are doing it they managed to sneak in some code that checked the termsrv.DLL, Vista then became severely limited as MS was flagging it as counterfeit software. After several attempts to revert to the original version – all which failed, I restored my original system from backups. I am in no way trying to scare users into not installing – just make DAMN sure you have a complete backup of your system. I reckon the check may have come in with the Malicious Software Removal code.

  264. Not a big worry, i’ve been using it for last 1 year, and i regularly update my system too, i never got the message, and anyway what i realize now is that i don’t need to use an OS that sucks, i normally use Windows to play NFS, and Ubuntu Linux for work, where you don’t need to hack, you have everything you want, and you won’t be called a software pirate 😀

  265. Hey Frans,
    thanks for the amazing tutorial if i can call it that but i seem to be having a problem i think because i am kind of green to this service. i have setup the system as the instruction say but i do not know how to remotely connect to the computer. i would really appreciate your help. thanks alot for the help!

  266. I found that Ｉgot permission issue too under Administrators user. Administrators have only read　and execute permission to termsrv.dll file. Only trustedInstaller has full control of it. I　can not take ownership either.

    Any suggestion to my problem?

  268. Great hack, my hats off to you. I have way to many laptops and desktops in this house to not have RDP. If you find a 64 hack please post it as I have a 64 bit laptop also.

  269. This worked like a champ for me until recently. Now, I can log on to my account remoely, but cannot log on to my son’s account. Any ideas how to fix this? The error message I get during log on is:

    “To log on to this remote computer,. you must be granted the Allow log on through Terminal Services right. By defailt, members of the Remote Desktoip Users group have this right”.

  270. a bit more info for the above question. My son’s account was a Standard User. If I change his account type to be an ADministrator, I can then log on remotely. Of course I would prefer to not give him admin priveleges just to allow me to log in remotely to help him fix problems…

  271. I did use this hack in the past, but due to an automatic Windows update , the hack stopped working, i.e I cant remote desktop into my Vista machine.

    However looking at the recent comments, by David Martin, I feel a bit encouraged now. Does the hack work for Vista premium 64 bit? If so what updated level of Windows should I be at? Does it matter?

  272. Right click computer and select manage. Goto Users and groups and goto properties for your son’s username. Goto groups and add the group “Remote Desktop Users” to the groups.
    Hope this helps.

  273. “Right click computer and select manage. Goto Users and groups and goto properties for your son’s username. Goto groups and add the group “Remote Desktop Users” to the groups.”

    Shantanu – thanks for the tip, but on my Vista Home Premium installation there is no Users and Groups option under the Computer Management console. I tried to add the Local Users and Groups snapin to the console but I received the message “This computer is running Windows Vista Home Premium. This snapin may not be used with this version of Windows”.

    Blech.

  274. oh yes, sorry, i was confused if it was so (i was in a journey), but i thought you should give it a try.
    anyway, try googling for a command to change the groups. it should be there.
    And yes, microsoft should learn from this, doesn’t make sense to not include RDP in Home Premium, there are home users also who use this feature.
    And if everything fails, try UltraVNC, its superb, with scaling and right connection settings, it can do wonders.

  275. Hi ive tried to enable remote desktop on Vista HP but it does not work. I keep getting a message ‘Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    Service is not listening ‘ when trying to run the batch file. I’ve opened the port on my firewall and configured the router. Any ideas?

  277. I tried the hack for Home Premium SP1. Apparently, everything went fine, but I still do not see the Remote Desktop options underneath Remote Assistance in System Properties. Is it not supposed to be there after running the hack, or is something wrong?

  279. Thanks! It’s working fine now, but I’m having a problem with file transfer. I tried checking the box to share hard disk drives, but I’m not able to copy and paste files between desktops. I also do not see both hard drives listed in “My Computer” on either the remote or host.

  280. Pingback: Remote Desktop - PDAPhoneHome.com
  281. Pingback: VISTA Vista Home Premium ook 'remote desktop'? - 9lives

  282. I think we are making it more complicated than required. I think the following steps should make file transfers no problem. I use this method on all my PC’s at home.
    PC1 = host, PC2 =client
    1. Create a username on PC1 EXACTLY the same as PC2, with the exact same password.
    2. Make sure both of the PC’s are on the same workgroup, if not make it so.
    3. Give the newly created username on PC1 Admin rights.
    4. On PC2, Start > My Computer
    5 . on the address bar, type: \\pc1\C$\ and hit enter.
    you should now have access to the C drive on the host PC. You can also map a drive, the same way.
    6. Resize this window, move it to the left of the Screen.
    7. Open C drive on local PC, resize, and move it to the right of the screen.
    8. Voila, copy from first screen to second, or vice-versa.

  283. Did everything, and no luck. XP Pro SP2 gets Screen View Only of Vista Home Premium SP1. No control, just a view of the desktop.

  284. Have to click the Take Control button, and then everything was fine. Worked this way without the patch, since I had rolled everything back.

  285. FYI,

    Running RDC XP as client and Vista HP w/sp1 causes adverse effect with AirLink Music Bridge and MediaMonkey. I was wanting to remote control the vista machine that runs MediaMonkey and the AirLink Music Bridge. RDC disables AirLink and prevents MediaMonkey from playing any music.
    The error;
    +++++++++++++++
    Log Name: Application
    Source: Application Error
    Date: 12/14/2008 12:56:47 AM
    Event ID: 1000
    Task Category: (100)
    Level: Error
    Keywords: Classic
    User: N/A
    Computer: Vista
    Description:
    Faulting application CmFlywav.exe, version 1.0.0.34, time stamp 0x473ae68c, faulting module CmFlywav.exe, version 1.0.0.34, time stamp 0x473ae68c, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x000140e8, process id 0x974, application start time 0x01c95dc9e4b6fabe.
    Event Xml:

    1000
    2
    100
    0x80000000000000

    1199
    Application
    Vista

    CmFlywav.exe
    1.0.0.34
    473ae68c
    CmFlywav.exe
    1.0.0.34
    473ae68c
    c0000005
    000140e8
    974
    01c95dc9e4b6fabe

    +++++++++++++++

  286. Addendum to last post;
    This only happens when logging on through RDC, once logged off everything is fine. This happens when the account is logged in as a single user or two, makes no differents. Wondering if this has anything to do with the modded DLL?

  287. What a great help!! Thanks a bunch… This ‘crippled’ products makes me thinking to move to another OS.. but with ease of use (comparing to Linux)… still haven’t enough time to learn it…hhhh??

  288. @Wayneb
Its a wrong notion that linux is not user friendly. However you might feel its not, because you’Re used to the way Windows works, and the way you work on it.
I used Windows a lot, when i first visited this blog, and today, around a year since then, Normally i work on Ubuntu linux. And let me tell you, linux rocks. Just like most people i also used to think its difficult, but now i feel it interesting, a way to learn things, and most importantly, do what YOU want to do, not what the OS wants to do.
So, i urge you to try out Ubuntu, its the best flavor of linux for people who’re beginning with linux.
A final point, think of it in this way-
Windows and linux both let you drive your car, but, while windows just lets you sit on the driver’s seat and drive, it won’t like you to change the way things work behind the scenes. But, linux thinks its your car, and YOU should decide how it should work. And, linux provides you with freedom.
All the best.

  289. The fix worked for me on Vista Home Premium SP1. However I can’t get it to work on non standard port. I’m trying to use port 21 so I can get through my school’s firewall. I can connect to the Vista box at home when I disable the Windows firewall on the Vista box, but not when the firewall is enabled. I tried opening port 21 for TCP and UDP but no luck. Any suggestions?

  290. I have modified the termsrv.dll file and am able to connect to my vista home premium through RDP within my local network (WIFI) using a laptop running XP Home. am curious to know if i can create a VPN and then connect to my vista home premium computer? i have actully connected to my computer from an outside network through VPN but am not able to run RDP from that computer. Is it only possible within the same wifi network or can i connect to it from anywhere in the world?

  292. Hi.
    Any problem maybe resolve for substitute yourself C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll

  293. I am using Vista Home Premium SP1.
    Downloaded the termsrv_sp1.zip, ran it as administrator but the options which need to be present for Remote Desktop (Control Panel > System > Remote Settings > Remote Connection doesn’t appear. Help would be appreciated.

  294. This patch only enables RDC on your computer. It WON’T show the “the options which need to be present for Remote Desktop (Control Panel > System > Remote Settings > Remote Connection”. If you want to use any non-administrator account from remote, add the account to the Remote Desktop users user group.

  295. THANK YOU!

    I went on my XP machine and controlled my Vista Premium Machine. I have used VNC, but it’s slow. RDC is much faster and the colors are more vibrant!

    Only problem is the “Terminal Services Client” (Remote Desktop Viewer) on my PDA doesn’t connect 😦

  296. I’ve been using this hack for some time now and it worked very well. Recently I switched to 64 bit and of course the 32 bit hack didn’t work anymore. RDP on the laptop works with Ultimate but only allows one session. On the desktop with home premium no RD at all of course. Yesterday I found a 64 bit version, works very well, except for the installation procedure itself. If you use it, you’ll have to do the installation itself by hand. I found it here:
    http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php?t=89002 page=3

    I put the whole lot on my page with an explanation how to do it by hand (well, the way I did it anyway) http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjansen1/home

    Basically I think you could use the installation script and the registry file from the 32 bit version here, replace the 32 bit .dll with the 64 bit .dll on the site I mentioned above and presto, you’ve got your 64 bit RDP hack for home premium to ultimate.

  298. Worked on orignal version. installed kb936330 (service pack 1) and now does not work. When I run it says port not listening any more. Uninstalled service pack 1 now works. Any updates?

  299. Worked on original version. installed kb936330 (service pack 1) and now does not work. When I run it says port not listening any more. Uninstalled service pack 1 now works. Any updates?

  300. I’ve been using this hack and it worked very well with vista home premium, bat it don’t work with vista home basic. some ideas ?

  301. Great fix ! Is this good for the pairing of Vista Home Premium SP1 to Windows XP Home ?

    In other words, Vista Home Premium is operating the desktop of XP Home. What settings are required for this at the XP end ?

    Thanks in advance.

  303. Does NOT work. Thanks for nothing. Garbage advice from crap website.

  304. Source Folder is C:\Users\Maximus\Downloads\termsrv_sp1\
    Taking ownership of C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll

    SUCCESS: The file (or folder): “C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll” now owned by th
    e administrators group.
    Granting Administrators rights
    processed file: C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
    Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files
    Stopping Terminal Services
    The Terminal Services service is stopping.
    The Terminal Services service was stopped successfully.

    1 file(s) copied.
    Copying C:\Users\Maximus\Downloads\termsrv_sp1\termsrv.dll to C:\Windows\System3
    2\
    1 file(s) copied.
    Importing Registry Keys
    Enabling RDP
    The operation completed successfully.
    Setting fSingleSessionPerUser to 1
    The operation completed successfully.
    Setting LimitBlankPasswordUser to 1
    The operation completed successfully.
    Configuring Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall

    Starting Terminal Services
    The Terminal Services service is starting.
    The Terminal Services service was started successfully.

    Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    TCP 0.0.0.0:3389 Arilius:0 LISTENING
    TCP [::]:3389 Arilius:0 LISTENING
    Service is listening
    Done
    Press any key to continue . . .

    What is not working here?

  305. Jack, you shouldn’t have uninstalled SP1. After installing SP1 you must re-install the patch again because it gets overwritten by SP1. And make sure to use the patch with the updated termsrv.dll for sp1.
    I’ve used it for months without problems. Recently reinstalled the old PC, updated to SP1, applied the patch. Worked immediatly, it didn’t even require a reboot.

  306. Pjo, there is a way to get RDP working on XP home that I know of. I used it once but it has a … ahem … slight problem. It involves making XP home think it’s XP pro. The very moment it contacts MS to check for updates and reports as having suddenly turned into XP pro you won’t be getting any updates from MS anymore.

  307. Dilan, everything seems to be working. So what is the problem ? Can you open a RD on the same PC to another user account ? If you can but you can’t do it from another PC you might have more than one firewall running and one of them is blocking RDP. Are you using the right dll ? What error messages are you getting, if any ? Any messages in the eventlogs ?

  308. Dilan, on Vista home premium the hack only works with admin accounts. Simply creating a Remote Desktop Users group and adding a non admin account to it WON’T work on home premium because the non admin user will still not have the Logon through Terminal Services (or whatever it’s called) user privilege.

  309. @ pjo (301)

    If you are using Vista to control XP Home, you don’t need to do anything to Vista, Vista can control other computers. You only need to do this for Vista to be controlled, not to control.

    You would have to do this for your XP home to allow it to be controlled

  310. @ 303

    You are retarded

    Does SO work. Thanks for flaming. Garbage rant from crap noob. you probably didn’t set it up right or something

  311. I tried this on my new Vista SP1 laptop and it worked, for me it does work on SP1.

    I think I tried something like this on my old laptop and it didn’t work. I had my Vista updated, but not so SP1, I think a few more Windows Updates would have made it SP1, it wasn’t stock Vista, but not quite SP1. I think the boot screen changed…

  312. No I am just wondering what is suppossed to happen after all that clears? like what am i to do next? also, how do i logon in onto the admin account with vista, (i havne’t gotten completely adapted to the new o.s.

  313. If it says it’s listening open a remote desktop/terminal server cleint and type in the hostname or ip of the machine you want to control. A login will appear, depending on the OS type your username and password, or click your username and type your password (You can also specify these credentials in the settings).

    you even can log onto two accounts at once, ex account 1 on the local computer, account 2 remotely. Or account 1 remote, account 2 on a different remote machine. And the server locked.

  314. @dilan

    the admin account is the account you specified when you installed vista. If the computer came pre-installed or if only has one account (it doesn’t ask for an account name when you switch it on), that account is the admin account. The administrator account still exists in Vista but is disabled by default. Leave it that way.

  315. @dilan

    sorry, I didn’t read your last post correctly. You should now be able to open remote desktop:

    start > programs > accessories > remote desktop connection

    specifiy the addres 127.0.0.1 on the computer you installed the hack on to test whether it works. It should open a new desktop. You can then test it from another computer (specifying the real address of course). If that doesn’t work then RDP by is being blocked somewhere by a firewall. On both computers check whether port 3389 is open. It’s open in the windows firewall on the computer you installed the hack on anyway.

  317. Hey, great tip.

    Worked perfectly on two Vista SP1 machines. I was using VNC, but it can be a bit slower than RDP.

    Thanks for the hack!

  318. A bit slower?

    More like a lot slower. But that’s when I use a wireless connection, I use VNC on an XP Home machine that’s wired and it works fine…

  319. I’ve run the termsrv hack for vista home premium but don’t see the remote desktop option underneath the remote assistance option on the menu. What have I missed?

  320. @ 319

    I don’t think you need to.

    I did this and I didn’t see that option there, but when I tried to remote in, it worked…

  322. As of last night when I did a windows update for SP1 I can’t get this to work.
    I was using it yesterday fine.. now all of sudden 3389 is not listening. It’s enabled on both my router and windows firewall…
    Any suggestions?

  323. my mobile device is not connecting to the desktop. on the mobile device’s logon screen, what’s meant by “computer name”, “user name”, “password” &”host”? i is it refering to the ddns user name & password? is it referring to the desktop’s user account name & account password? also… if the “computer name” is the ip address, what ip do I use? the ip i’m shown using ipconfig is different than the ip i’m shown when I google “what’s my ip”.

  325. The IP that ipconfig shows is the actual IP address of the laptop itself. This can be anything from a fixed address someone configured it to have, a DHCP address it get’s from a DHCP server to a autoconfigured one it assumes if none of the above applies (read: succeeds). The address you see with “what’s my IP” can be anything from the IP address of the laptop (it usually isn’t), the address of the NAT router that the laptop uses to connect through to the internet service provider or the address that the ISP temporarily assigns to your dialup connection if you use one. You shouldn’t use the address you see with “what’s my IP” but the actual IP addresses you see with ipconfig, assuming the desktop and laptop are on the same LAN which is probably the case.

  327. @322 jmo: you have to reapply the patch after upgrading to SP1. It should work again then.

  328. I can’t seem to connect to the remote computer as much as I try after following this tutorial. I’ve seen similar tutorials online as well, some with SP1 hacks as well. Here is what I’ve tried doing:

    On the Windows Vista Home Premium Machine:
    1. Downloading the termsrv.zip
    2. Extracting to the Desktop
    3. Running the premium.bat file under “Run as Administrator…” (similar to original directions)
    4. After reading the prompt to be successful and listening, I make sure port 3389 is indeed working.
    – I do this by running cmd.exe, typing netstat -a, and seeing that TCP [:::]:3389 is LISTENING.
    5. Going onto the Linksys Router, I go under the Applications & Gaming tab, to Port Range Forward the following:
    – Application: rd1
    – Start Range: 3389
    – End Range: 3389
    – Protocol: Both (TCP & UDP)
    – IP Address: (Home Premium’s Local Address)
    – Enable: [X]
    6. I proceed onto the Status tab of the Linksys Router to check the IP Address of the router and mark that down.

    Going onto my Windows XP: MCE, SP3 Machine:
    1. Open RDC – (Start Menu -> Run -> mstsc.exe)
    2. Enter the IP Address of the Router
    3. Enter the User Name of the Vista Machine
    4. Configure and safe the settings correctly
    5. Connect

    I get the error message:
    “Remote Desktop Disconnected

    This computer can’t connect to the remote computer.

    Try connecting again. If the problem continues, contact the owner of the remote computer or your network administrator.

    [ OK ] [Help ]”

    I don’t know what to do at this point, please help!

  329. Whoever wrote comment #303–

    I’m not sure if you were talking to me or the owner of this site; either way, the hacks do work. I’ve tried them myself.

  330. For people who wants this bat in portuguese:

    :START
    @echo off
    cls

    :DETECTARGUMENTS
    SET SINGLESESSION=1
    SET BLANK=1
    IF /I *%1 == *MULTI SET SINGLESESSION=0
    IF /I *%2 == *MULTI SET SINGLESESSION=0
    IF /I *%1 == *BLANK SET BLANK=0
    IF /I *%2 == *BLANK SET BLANK=0

    :SETSOURCEFOLDER
    REM This will get the folder the batch file was launched from since the current
    REM directory will change if launched from a network share
    SET SOURCEFOLDER=%~dp0
    ECHO Source Folder is %SOURCEFOLDER%

    :TAKEOWNERSHIP
    echo Taking ownership of %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll
    takeown /a /f %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll
    echo Granting Administradores rights
    icacls %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll /Grant Administradores:F

    :STOPTERMINALSERVICES
    echo Stopping Termservice
    net stop “Termservice”

    :BACKUPTERMSRVDLL
    copy %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll %SystemRoot%\System32\*.*.bak

    :COPYTERMSRVDLL
    echo Copying %SOURCEFOLDER%termsrv.dll to %SystemRoot%\System32\
    copy /y “%SOURCEFOLDER%termsrv.dll” %SystemRoot%\System32\

    :IMPORTREGKEYS
    echo Importing Registry Keys
    regedit /s “%SOURCEFOLDER%termonpremium.reg”
    echo Enabling RDP
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server” /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

    :SETSINGLESESSIONSETTING
    ECHO Setting fSingleSessionPerUser to %SINGLESESSION%
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server” /v fSingleSessionPerUser /t REG_DWORD /d %SINGLESESSION% /f

    :SETBLANKPASSWORDPOLICY
    ECHO Setting LimitBlankPasswordUser to %BLANK%
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa” /v LimitBlankPasswordUse /t REG_DWORD /d %BLANK% /f

    :CONFIGUREFIREWALL
    ECHO Configuring Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall
    netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable

    :STARTTERMINALSERVICES
    echo Starting Termservice
    net start “Termservice”

    :PAUSE5SECONDS
    ECHO Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    choice /n /c y /d y /t 5 > nul

    :CHECKIFSERVICELISTENING
    echo Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    SUBST
    netstat -a | find /i “3389”
    if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto SERVICENOTLISTENING

    :SERVICEISLISTENING
    echo Service is listening
    goto CONTINUE

    :SERVICENOTLISTENING
    echo Service is not listening

    :CONTINUE
    echo Done
    Pause

    it ran correctly!

  332. frans,

    i am a total idiot and tried to run these reg changes on my x64 version of Home Premium and now my Terminal Services no longer works.

    Is there any good back out scripts that you might have for reverting the changes?

    I get an Error 193 everytime I try to start Terminal Services.

    Thanks-jay

  333. Andrew Block – Thanks so much. I tried your x64 version and it fixed my terminal services. Solid thanx.

  334. Help I did this on my 2 home premium pcs and now ONLY ONE can get onto the internet, the other can’t even find my ROUTER. I wanna know what could have caused this, this was the only thing I did last night

  335. If you have a hotmail/live email account you can install Live Mesh and connect to your computers from anywhere. Works with home premium great and no router config. Check it out.
    http://www.mesh.com

  336. Can you please tell me how to undo that?
    It looks great but I will try later, so can you please tell me how to undo that?

    Thanks,
    Nishant

  337. @334 Adam,

    You did run the right script. If you ran the Portuguese one I’d suggest buying a router that speaks the Portuguese version of DHCP. Seriously, I can’t possibly think of what went wrong. Try assigning the PC that isn’t getting the right IP address information from the router a fixed address with the same subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server as the one that isn’t experiencing problems. If that doesn’t help put back the original dll and do a system restore (you did make a restore point before running the script of course) and try it again. If that doesn’t help either reinstall the system from scratch, install all the MS updates after that and then install a virusscanner after that and then install the hack before installing anything else. It really should work then. You might also consider installing the hack after all the updates and before the virusscanner though I’d prefer installing the virusscanner right after the updates and before installing anything else.

  339. I have done this process on both my main PC and a media PC connected to my TV (both running Vista Home Premium).

    Big issue is that it is asking my to have login credentials. When I read some other decomentation, it tells me that to create these RDC login credentials you go tto the securities tab. The particular menu is not in my version of Vista to let me create the user login details.

    Can someone please let me know how they got around this, and possibly a bit of a step-by-step for the less technically minded.

    Thanks

  340. First set a password for your account by going to Control Panel>User Accounts.
Then,goto task manager. Check out what is your network username, which is displayed in the Users tab. This will work only if your account is an administrator user account. Now login with your username and password from your other pc. Note that assigning a password, and having a administrator account are compulsory.

  341. Pingback: Remote Desktop Stopped Working | keyongtech

  343. I installed the batch file successfully but could not make a remote connection.
    How do I test that the remote desktop server is running?

  344. @343 Try making a connection to localhost (127.0.0.1) on the machine that you nare trying to connect to. If you are prompted for a username or denied a connection because you’re already on the console, the server is working. If you get a message that a connection cannot be made, there might be a problem.

  346. Hello,
    Can somebody pls write a step by step verification strategy to make sure that this hack is working as expected after sucessfully running the batch file and the TCP port?
    Many of us just do not know where to look for symptoms when remote connection does not work even after successful installation of this hack.

    Q. How do I “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer” when this radio button when it does not apprear in the “remote” tab. Is there a round about way of achieving the same thing?
    Thx.

  347. @344,
    Hi Rob,
    I tried running it from the localhost with no avail. Says “can not connect to remote computer”.
    However I see in the services window that the “terminal services” is running.

    Any other clues I can look out for?
    Thx.

  348. @347
check windows firewall. If not already done, add tcp port 3389 to exceptions list.
Also, in services, check if any dependencies for Terminal services are not satisfied.

  349. @348
    Hi Shantanu, I guess I have found the issue but do not know how to fix it. The service is not listening to port 3389.
    This is what I have done to zero in on the problem. I executed the commandlines in the batch file one by one after removing the silent mode. Everything went successfully except the last two commands…
    SUBST => did not display any virtual drive
    netstat -a | find /i “3389” => returned nothing

    Pls tell me what could be cause of it and how I can possibly fix it.
    Thx

  350. @347
    I only have only used this hack on home premium and on ultimate, so I don’t know about the other versions.

    In Home Premium the radio button “allow users to connect remotely to this computer” isn’t there. This doesn’t matter at all, the hack should work anyway and you don’t need the radio button.
    The very first time I used this hack the netstat command also didn’t return anything and the hack didn’t work. The reason was that I had used the pre-SP1 version of the hack instead of the SP1 version. After applying the right version everything was OK. AFAIK the current version of the batch file should sort all of this out automagically but you might want to check it out manually just to be sure. You seem knowlegable enough to do that. Things to keep in mind are:
    – SP1 needs a different .dll than pre-SP1
    – 64 bit windows needs a different .dll than 32 bit windows (so that already gives a total of 4 different versions of the termsrv.dll)
    – ultimate only needs a couple of registry changes, home premium needs lots of them. Make sure you run the correct .bat script for your version of Windows.
    As for firewalls, you might also be using another firewall besides or instead of Windows Firewall. McAfee virusscan for example comes with it’s own firewall and switches windows firewall off. Allowing RDP in Windows Firewall is obviously useless if a different firewall is blocking RDP.
    If you are tring to connect through a NAT router, the router itself might be blocking RDP and you’ll have to fix that. Usually this will involve setting up port forwarding on the router.

    What I’m trying to say; there is no easy checklist for everyone to use as you suggest. There are simply to many different possible situations/variables and therefore possible reason’s why the hack might not work straight out of the box, though in most cases it will. Just keep working on it and eventually you’ll find the cause your particular problem and solve it, with or without a little help. You’re smart enough to do that.

  352. @Shantanu,
    As you say, ultimate doesn’t need this crack. But because it’s in the “package” I tried it out anyway. With it you can open a remote desktop on a machine running Ultimate when there is already a session on the console of the machine. Without the hack the session on the console of the machine will have to be disconnected before the remote desktop can be opened. This is because of licensing. Bill doesn’t want more than one person working on the same machine at a time if they didn’t pay for it.

  353. Well, I *think* that’s the reason why Ultimate won’t allow more than one active desktop at a time without this hack.

  354. Oh, good observation. 🙂
    By the way, do you know if there is any way to make RDP a bit like VNC, so “when i move the cursor on client, the cursor on host pc moves”, i.e. the host doesn’t lock my screen, behaviour can be achieved?

  355. Shantanu, I don’t have any experience with VNC. To me what you want sounds a bit like remote assistance (don’t have any experience with that either). I might not be interpreting you correctly but if I am, I’d say I don’t think RDP was meant for that. Whichever way, I can’t help you with that. I don’t know how to make a desktop session visible on more than one screen at a time.

  356. Well, other than trying out VNC. It’s been lying around here somewhere since about 2002 and I never thought of trying it. Thanks for the tip, you just gave me something to do tonight 🙂

  358. I don’t have much experience with Linux either but you’re very right about that for sure. I installed OpenSuse 10.2 in a VM a couple of weeks ago and it clobbered windows in 5 minutes flat imho. It even mentioned DECnet support. I couldn’t believe my eyes !!

  359. Even I, being a complete noob on Linux, had it sharing it’s files with Windows in no time. Couldn’t get it working the other way around. I guess Bill won’t let me share my files with anything I didn’t pay him for.

  360. @Rob
    It’d be nice to talk to you on IM, could you please visit my website www DOT shantanutushar DOT com (was not getting posted) and leave a comment with your e-mail ID (not displayed) so that i can communicate back to you. I’d also try to help you with linux as much as possible.

  361. @Shantanu,
    I just sent you a mail using the address on your site (very neat site btw). If it doesn’t arrive, please let me know here.

  362. Started getting error “Because of a protocol error this session will be disconnected” doesn’t matter if I try connecting over Las or Tsweb. Any Ideas

  364. Hello Rob/Shantanu,

    I have finally got it working. I made the biggest mistake of not checking my downloads first. I used pre-SP1 dll instead of SP1 dll which caused all the issues.

    I sincerely thank you guys who replied to my emails/posted their experiences and helped me navigate through the problem.
    Thx.

  365. Thanks. You’re a superhero. I was half way out of the door to buy XP in my frustration. Disaster overted!!

  368. first time I got an error message ‘access denied’, second time I tried on safe mode and worked great.
    thanks

  369. Well for Vista Premium users trying to get this thing to work, I found out you have to copy the termsrv.dll (or whatever exactly its called) out of the .zip and maunally move it to the c:/windows/system32 folder BUT you have to go into windows service and STOP the Terminal Services processes (I stopped both) and then I could copy over and even delete the current file in there. Once you copy the file over to the system32 folder I suggest you do a right click then properties on the file and near the bottom click the “Unblock” box then click apply and windows vista will then recognize the file as its own otherwise I think it blocks it and the system can’t use it…. That’s what I did and it worked, kinda a beoch but it worked… Tom

  370. Oh then I would suggest your just reboot / restart the machine…. and let Windows start clean, this should work…

  371. The last time I used the script on Home Premium all I did was make a restore point and run the the script as administrator. No rebooting or safe mode necessary, just run and have fun.

  373. Just wanted to help with those having trouble… if you are getting errors, you do not need to disable UAC. Right click on the batch file an choose “Run as administrator…”. The problem is the batch file doesn’t run in the cmd you previously opened, its opens it’s own, therefore not being run as an administrator.

  374. The SP1 version of this hack works perfectly on SP2 beta. Just reinstall right behind the installation of SP2 and you’re back in business as usual. I tested on windows ultimate 64 bit but as it uses the same modified termsrv.dll as home premium it really should work on home premium too.

  375. A voice inside me keeps telling me I shouldn’t have said that. MS will probably enhance SP2 with a feature necessitating the devolpment of a new version of this hack now.

  376. I tried the patch and it worked great!!!

    Does anyone know how to enable copy and paste?

    That is something I use alot between my XP computers but I would love to be able to use it on my new Vista Premium media server.

    Thanks,

    Dave

  377. Hey guys i was wondering if i did everything correctly because after restarting my computer in the remote tab there is still no remote desktop so i can allow my computer to be accessed. I downloaded the file ran it in CMD and it said everything went successful and i also enabled the port 3389 in the firewall but it wont work. I have windows home premium sp1 32bit.
    Thanks and any support would be greatly appreciated

  378. @Niko, in home premium you won’t see anything change in the remote tab. You don’t need to, after running the patch it should work, even without rebooting. If it doesn’t, please read post #350 and make sure you have tried the correct patch. There are 4 of them.

  379. Hello,

    This is working great, but I have a small problem with it.
    I start the computer to control (WOL), then I remotely connect to the computer (with your solution), all is fine. Then I want to connect directly to the computer to control (it has a keyboard and a screen), and it is not possible. Everytime I want to do it, I have a message telling that the password is not correct, so I have to restart the computer (or to close the session).

    Is there a way to do that?

    Thank you
    Marc

  381. now i’ve been reading thru a lot of this post to try to find where my prob lies and how to fix it. w/o success.
    here it is i d/l the .zip a few days ago, ran the premium.bat as an admin. everything looked kosher.
    however i do not see any more options in my remote settings as i did before. i understand that this is normal (as per post#377/378).
    my issue is that my comp running vista premium sp1 is NOT the host comp. i want to access my work comp (running XP sp3) from my vista comp. thus i need the “remote desktop” tab to connect to it.

    do we have any thoughts on this matter? am i missing something/not understanding the purpose of the fix.

    lastly, if i need to uninstall it cuz it didnt work for me or w/e; how do i go about it? system restore is not an option cuz for some unknown annoying reason i dont hav any restore points prior to the installation (that is a coincidence, and i imagine is unrelated to my installing this patch).

    many thanks:)

  382. @381
    Hi Lou,
    In that case you don’t need this fix at all, in which case you might want to remove it (it is, after all, not supported). Be carefull though because the only easy way to remove it is with a system restore and using old restore points can mean trouble whereas I don’t know of any problems this fix causes. You just didn’t need it but since you already installed it, you might as well leave it there. Who knows, it might be useful sometime in the future. To get a connection to your computer at work from your computer at home, the computer at work has to run a RDP server. Windows XP Professional has one built in. That’s where you have to enable remote desktop connections. On XP the tab to do this is the same one as in Vista (in both cases, the home editions don’t have the relevant radio buttons in the tab).

    Vista home premium has a RDP client by default. You’ll find it by entering “mstsc” in the search box or, using the start button, programs > accessories > remote desktop connection.

    The main issues getting the connection to actually work will probably involve getting firewalls and network administrators along the way to cooperate 🙂

    Regards and good luck

  383. omfg! i saw that remote desktop was not an option in remote settings, so i figured that the whole idea of RDC was not availible on vista home premium. lou: rdc FAIL!

    the host is running xp pro, so it should be possible, ill have to figure it out.
    if interested: i tried entering the ip address (in my vista comp) to connect to it, w/o success. RDC is enabled on the host comp, firewall has RDC (and remote assist for good measure) as an exception. the user name and password are correct, but cant connect cuz of “account restriction”. so unless a common fix comes to mind, ill go at it alone.

    thanks!

  384. Hey, if it is for use to anyone… after some windows updates the patch won’t work. Just install sp1 again, and apply de patch, be carefull what you update from there. 😉

  386. The only microsoft patch that caused a minor problem here was kb940510 which claimed it would help me by only *checking* whether my 32 bit copy of Windows Ultimate was “genuine” (whatever that means, it works without any undocumented problems so it must be genuine). Well, it did work until kb940510 was installed and installing kb940510 didn’t help me at all; I had to reinstall Windows. KB940510 was worse than all previous trojans and virusses combined and I got it from … Microsoft itself. I thought those damn updates were supposed to make Windows a little better or at least less buggy. Why can’t MS send the free patch found here with that update machine of theirs instead bothering perfectly innocent people like me with their useless WGA checks or sending me old hardware drivers everytime I get proper new drivers using the hardware manufacturers’ own updating software. Apart from the security updates or one that addresses a specific problem you’re having, most updates from the WU service are useless at the very best. Never let your system get updated automatically and when you manually check for updates, read carefully what they’re really for and whether actually need them. If you don’t, block it. Take for example the monthly Windows Junk Email Filter or the Malicious Software removal tool. Anybody know what they’re for ? The only malicious software I ever had to remove was kb940510 and I got that from Windows Update itself. Why does WU think I need an update every month to filter junk mail. I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself without an update for windows mail. I don’t even use windows mail anyway.

  387. Does anyone know how to get this patch working on ultimate the same way it does on home premium where U can log in as administrator on 127.0.0.1 without getting the message that I’m already logged on at the console. It’s much easier that way than using that Slow User Switching thing.

  388. I Have installed your tool and it works great, but only whem i want to download files from the remote computer towards the local computer the drive letters from the local computer don’t show in te remote computer. When i use the local computer with other Vista Business or 2003 servers its okay. But with the “patched” Vista Home Premium its not.

    Thanks in advance for your answer

  389. @ 388

    You can map a network drive, not as good but it works.

    Atleast you can do it for free!

  390. This didn’t appear to work on my lowly Vista Home Premium desktop computer. Yet another thing that Mac does out of the box that Windows needs a manual for. I guess I’m left to resort to VNC in this case.

    Windows XP was much more friendly when it came to sharing its screen and files.

  391. @Richard, you did, of course, install the right version 🙂
    You can also download ultimate or stick with the Mac which is probably a better idea anyway. And if you are going to resort to VNC anyway then you might also consider dropping windows altogether.
    I disagree with you about XP. At least Vista is an attempt to emulate something that remotely resembles a proper operating system instead of something to play games on and share virii with, doing so in administrator mode all the time just because it’s virtually impossible to use XP in any other way.

  392. I can get it to work.. at first the port 3389 listen but something else didnt work now when i fixed that the port dont listen anymore.. and i had added the port i all firewalls i have =/

  393. @ Richard

    Windows Ultimate/Business does it out of the Box. Home Premium isn’t supposed to because they want you to buy Ultimate so they can make more money. I am not sure if you can control a mac with RDP, I think their “Remote Desktop” uses VNC.

  394. What do you mean with “something else didn’t work”. Fixing whatever that was seems to have caused 3389 to stop listening. Details please.
    On home premium you should be able to rdp to 127.0.0.1. A firewall normally won’t block that thus allowing you to determine whether it’s a firewall problem or a rdp server problem. Whether the port is listening or not and whether firewalls are letting anything through or not are both important yet quite unrelated issues here.
    Also on home premium you need to authenticate using an admin account when you try to open a rdp session.

  395. sorry im not so good at writing in english but i will try.

    first i did everything that i should do. but i discovered that i didnt have access to system32 so i fixed that and copied “termsrv.dll” to system32 and then i run the other file (premium.bat) and now it works fine until the listening part. and there i am. cant connect to this computer but i can connect from this computer to my other machine. when i try to connect to localhost I get the usual message “couldnt connect bla bla bla, contact the admin” or something like that.

  396. Under normal circumstances you aren’t supposed to have write access to system32. You shouldn’t copy termsrv.dll to system32 manually. You should let premium.bat do that for you by running it as administrator. The easiest way to do that is by right clicking on it and selecting run as administrator from the context menu. It sounds like you’ve messed up the security settings in system32 big time and the terminal server can’t open the termsrv.dll file because of an incorrect ntfs security setting on the file. Try changing those to something that looks like those on one of the other files in system32. The security entity CREATOR OWNER normally has full control on anything created in system32 and many files there don’t inherit their security settings from the parent directory by default. Since you are the creator owner now you might be the only one able to read the file. Check out which user the Terminal Server runs as and make sure that user has read access to the file. Otherwise just make sure Everybody has read access to the file. Don’t mess with security settings on system32 without being absolutely sure what you’re doing unless you happen to like reinstalling your computer from scratch.

  398. What didn’t work ?
    Look, try this: find out which version of this gem you need (32/64 bit, pre-SP1 or SP1 version). Download, run premium.bat as administrator. Never fails. If you use the _right_ version that is.

  400. Download the 32 bit version for SP1. There are (or were, haven’t looked recently) only 4 versions to choose from. The link is at the top of the page. I just downloaded it (again). However for reason’s unknown to to me the termonpremium.reg file doesn’t match with the one I always use, although the patch I use came from this site. I waste tons of time slipstreaming downloaded iso images of vista which have to be installed after that to test. One of the first things I install right after Vista is this patch and it has never failed in the 100+ times I’ve used it. I’ve put the version I use (32 and 64 bit, SP1) here:
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjansen1/files/RDP Vista SP1.zip
    Download, unpack, make restore point, right-click on the premium.bat file in the x86 directory and run as administrator. Don’t do any manual copying.
    You might want to change registry setting SINGLESESSION to 1 in the premium.bat file first. If you don’t, a new session will be created everytime you open one. If you do there will be only one session per user making it easy to take control of an existing session from another PC (personally I prefer that). You can always change the setting afterwards using regedit.

  401. okay but the link don’t work “The requested URL /~rjansen1/files/RDP was not found on this server.”
    =/

  402. The link is:

    http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjansen1/files/

    you will find a .zip there called RDP*.* which you can download by clicking on it (with firefox, don’t know about IE open the zip if you click on it). You don’t need any of the other files in the directory specified by the link.

  403. I also think that if the kit that can be found on this page doesn’t work for you, the kit I always use won’t work for you either. Something else must be wrong.

  407. can’t you read ? where did you miss “right click premium.bat and run as administrator” ? Do it from wherever suits you. In your configuration it probably isn’t going to work anyway.

  408. okey sry for my bad english bur i think it work now. when i type in “localhost” it comes up “password” and “user”.

  409. sorry for my impoliteness. As you are getting a username/password popup RDP is working. On home premium you can only use an administrator account to log in to a remote desktop session. If you have trouble setting up a session from another computer, then a firewall is blocking it and you will have to investigate that. Good luck !

  413. I didn’t know there was one. Audio works fine here, whether left at the remote computer, switched off or transported to the local machine. My problem is with DVD’s. Can’t burn them in a remote session and can’t mount iso images in PowerISO’s virtual drive. I read somewhere that this is one of those terrific security features in windows. You can remotely shutdown/reboot a computer but you can’t use it’s DVD when logged in through RDP. For security reasons. You’ve got to work for Microsoft to understand that kind of logic.
    Anybody seen a version that works in windows 7 yet ?

  415. Is there any way to connect A vista premium to another premium using the hacked dll because it does not work.

  417. does this work if im not within my LAN say my laptop is at home and I’m at work? otherwise its great I finally got it… I saw some people with the same prob as me everything said it was good and worked well I had to go into Windows Firewall and add TCP port 3389 then perfect (as long as I can leave my laptop at home and be at work)

  418. I have two tablet PCs (XP tablet edition sp3 32bit) and a desktop with two monitors running Vista Home Premium sp1 64 bit. Over a LAN I want to use each of the tablets to control (keyboard/mouse) the desktop with one tablet showing the picture from one of the desktop monitors, and the other tablet showing the picture from the other desktop monitor (two RDP connections at the same time).

    Do you think your patch can allow this?

    Do you know whether upgrading to Ultimate will allow this?

    Note I don’t think there is any relevant difference between XP tablet and XP. But my main motivation is to use the tablet PC’s as graphics tablets.

    Thanks for your help and the helpful site.

  420. lol I am 420

    I didn’t have to restart when I got it working…

    But still restarting is worth a try.

  421. @Mark

    With this patch your desktop will support multiple simultaneous RDP sessions. As many as it’s memory can handle afaik. Depending on the value of registry key
    HKLM\SYSTEM\Currentcontrolset\Control\Terminal Server\fSingleSessionPerUser that will be _one_ session per user but as many as there are users or if the value is set to zero, as many sessions as you want, all using the same username.

    Upgrading to Ultimate won’t help, you’ll still need this patch to allow more than one RDP session at a time on your desktop (a licensing issue). The only thing Ultimate offer’s you is that those sesssions can be created with a non-admin account. But you’ll still need this patch to allow more than one session at a time (if anyone knows another workaround please let me know).

  422. @everybody
    no restart is required after applying this. If it doesn’t work right away the reason is almost allways
    1) wrong version of patch applied or right version applied the wrong way (didn’t run as administrator) or both
    2) sometimes firewall blocking rdp
    Here the installation procedure sometimes displays an error at the end but until now it allways worked, even after the error appeared at the end. Without rebooting.

  423. I installed premium.bat on my vista pc, but initially I couldnt remote from my xp machine. I was getting authentication error(error code: 0x80090330). I had to modify rdp file(default.rdp) on my xp machine. Now its working like a charm! Thanks

  424. @Rob 421

    if I set that key you are saying I can have multiple sessions without making a new account? If I connect how does it know to make a new session or use an existing one?

    @snehal 423
    What exactly did you modify?

  425. @417 Spence

    On my router I forwarded the ports RDP uses (don’t know off by hand which ones, the router already had entries for it) and I was able to remote in from my phone over the internet.

  426. @424 MPG

    After lot of googling I got the info from microsoft website. So I changed authentication level to 0 and enable credsupport to 0 in the rdp file on xp machine. After making this changes I DIDNT get error msg (authentication error code: 0×80090330) and was ALLOWED to remote into vista home premium.

    In the vista it was logging off my admin account. So I created one more standard account. Couldnt remote with the new account (privileges problem) so had to promote new account to admin account. So now I have two admin accounts in vista. 1st account my wife use it(locally), whereas 2nd account I use it (remotely). Bottomline is we both use the same pc simultaneously, one locally and other remotely. Since both the accounts are admin accounts there is no problem of accessing drives, folders and programs. If you need any other info let me know.

  427. @MPG
    What happens when you attempt to create a new session using an account that already has a session depends on the value of that key. That’s how it decides whether or not to make a new session or to “redirect” one if there already is one with that username. It doesn’t matter whether the existing session is a RDP session or not. If the value of fSinglesessionperuser is zero a new session is created every time so multiple sessions using one username can exist. The downside is you cannot take over an existing session. If the value the key is 1 and there is already is a session, you “take over” that session.
    You can compare it with using “switch user”. If the value of the key is zero and you switch user from your current user session to a different one instead of logging out, there is no way of switching back to your original session. If you try to, a new session will created instead. I don’t know if this actually applies to “switch user” but that’s how it works with RDP and that registry key.

  428. Re:my goal of separately connecting to/controlling the two monitors of the remote desktop Vista computer. How does one get an RDP connection to just the second monitor (ie not the primary, not both spanned into one)?

  429. @MPG

    What I said above is not correct. The correct explanation: if fsinglesessionperuser is set to zero and there already is a “connected” session for a particular user, a new session is created. If there already is a session but it isn’t connected to a display (in taskmanager the session is “disconnected” ) you will connect to that session. If fsingelsession is set to 1 and there already is a session, disconnected or not, you will connect to that session. If the existing session is connected to a display it will be disconnected from that display first.

  430. I’m trying to setup my port forwarding settings on my router and I don’t know what destination port to choose. I have the incoming port set at 3389 what should the destination port be? 3389 as well?

  431. It depends. You could forward it to any port you like but most likely you want to forward it to port 3389 to enable RDP through your router to a local computer. Personally I’d prefer first trying to forward incoming connections on say port 53896 to a known port en let anyone trying to connect to a known port from the outside … outside.
    Works well with ftp but it might not be that simple with RDP. If you go into the Windows registry you can change the port number the RDP server listens to. It’s key HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server\winstations\rdp-tcp\portnumber
    or something like that. Maybe you can hide the open port in your router by changing the value of that key to let’s say 47183 and the port forwarding in your router to use that port instead of 3389. I’ve never tried that but I certainly would if I wanted to open a port for RDP on the router.

  432. @ 431

    I am having trouble with FTP over the internet. I cannot connect to my FTP server even though I forwarded ports 20 and 21…

  433. @432

    MPG, what kind of a problem ?
    FTP has two modes called “active” and “passive” mode which makes it a difficult. When I looked up the difference I could understand it but I hadn’t the vaguest idea what to do about it. Active mode worked okay if I switched that on on the client side but usually FTP clients expect passive mode and that didn’t work. I use the filezilla FTP server and a friend suggested specifying some random high numbered ports, say 61234 to 61238 on the FTP server to be used for passive mode FTP and forwarding those ports on the router too. I don’t forward port 20 at all, only 21 (actually I don’t forward 21 either) and the 4 passive mode ports (in my case) on the router. You are free to choose which port range you use for passive mode FTP, any range will do (just don’t use well known ports or anything below 1024) and the client doesn’t need to know which range you’re using beforehand. It just connects to the server on port 21 and the server tells it which port(s) to use I think.
    In my case the outside client has to connect to port 57138, the router forwards that to port 21 on the FTP server and the server starts chatting with the outside client with those other ports. Port 21 is completely deaf on the router and I only open 57138 on the router and start the FTP server when necessary, sometimes forgetting to open port 21 in the firewall as well on the host running the server so it *still* doesn’t work 🙂
    Maybe I’m paranoid…

  434. It is possible to use a different port for RDP. Change the above mentioned registry key, restart the server or reboot the machine and let the client connect with the command

    mstsc /v:ip-address:alternative-portnumber

    You can add the command to your startmenu if you like, configure your router to forward the port and you should be able to RDP over the internet without opening port 3389. And you don’t have to ask the network administrator at work to open the port for you if its blocked. Just use a port number higher than 49152, afaik they are never blocked.

  435. Rob
    When you make registry changes in xp it is normally done in currentcontrolset
    In Vista somebody advises to do it in controlset001 and others suggest to do it in currentcontrolset. Where should changes be done in currentcurrentset or in controlset001? For changing port nr if I do it in currentcontrolset its not changing in controlset001. I dont know after rebooting it changes port nr. in every branches of registry. Otherwise there will be conflicting(different) port nrs. Your adivise needed

  436. @435
    Tom,

    I really don’t know. I did it in currentcontrolset the other day. I can’t remember seeing any other controlset then. Maybe the numbered controlsets are just copies with currentcontrolset being a the same set as the highest numbered controlset. Or currentcontrolset is renamed to a numbered set and a new copy is made when a system restore point is created. I really don’t know.

    In my previous post I made the impression that modifying the registry is necessary but this might not be the case:

    If you want use a different port number for the sole reason of not using 3389 for incoming connections from internet going through a NAT router at home it might be easier and certainly safer to first try changing the port forwarding on your router only, so that incoming connections from outside to port xxx on your router are forwarded to port 3389 on your computer. That way port 3389 is closed from outside your LAN, you don’t have to manually change anything in the registry of your computer(s) at home and can still use 3389 inside your LAN.
    Making a client computer use a different port than 3389 for RDP doesn’t involve changing anything in the registry, you can use mstsc /v:ip-address:port-number.

    My only advice is: make a restore point before editting the registry on a computer you use for anything other than just testing.

  437. Rob
    If I want to use port xxxx, you are suggesting to use mstsc /v:IP-addresss:xxxx where x is the new port number. If i configure my router to forward incoming port xxxx request to my IP then I guess my registry should have new xxxx port nr..? coz if my registry is not modified with the new xxxx port number how will my router forward the incoming request? Secondly my router dosnt provide any option of forwarding port xxxx to 3389. So in my case I guess if i want to use new port then I have to modify registry first..?

  438. Tom,

    In that case you will have change the port number that the rdp server on your computer listens to match the value you choose for x. The only way I know how to that is by editting in the registry. Maybe it can be done with group policy in ultimate. Good old editting the registry is much easier then that policy crap.

  439. Rob, I have 2 pc’s and a laptop. The PC’s run XP and run fine but the lap runs vista home premium. I followed the instructions and the lap gives me the message: computer can’t connect to remote computer. when I tried installing with the batch file again it didn’t turn off the terminal service, it didn’t copy and install termserv file and it didn’t listen; what am I doing wrong?

  440. Now today the desktops don’t want to work; either I cannot follow directions well or gremlins are at work? How do I fix this?

  441. What do you want to achieve with this ? If you want to let the laptop to be able to open a rdp session to the desktops you don’t need this little gem. The laptop already can do that.

  444. Oops, please ignore previous question. Top of the page appears to have the answer.

  445. My laptop won’t do it either. I don’t mind doing it myself but I hate the shopping.

  448. This is the rundown; 2 desktops and 1 laptop pc’s desks have xp lap has vista home premium. RDP runs on 1 desk not the other or the lap. tried installing and run hack but get nada on lap. am not overly concerned with the non-working desk but I need it for the lap. even went back to a restore point just in case and tried again and again nada; says it can’t connect to remote computer. is it something i’m not doing?

  449. what says it can’t connect and to what remote computer do you want it to connect ? Please rephrase your post, replacing every single occurrence of the word “it” by the object the word “it” refers to. Maybe I can help than.

  450. the lap says it can’t connect to remote computer when I try both desktops. It being the RDP function, it doesn’t seem to work.

  451. I still don’t get it. Correct me if I’m mistaken: on the laptop, which is running Vista, you are trying to set up a remote desktop session to one of the desktops which are both running XP ?

  452. yes, and the laptop says that it can’t connect to remote computer contact admin. I followed the instructions and nothing so I went back to a restore point and tried again and still the same.

  453. Then you don’t need this little gem. Vista home premium has a built in RDP client. Just go back to that restore again. Then go and figure out why the RDP client on your laptop isn’t working. This forum is about RDP server on vista home premium, not client.

  454. And by the way garret, I hate your guts more than you want to know, you little shit for brains.

  455. Rob, now you’ve got me confused and why the name calling? I’ve read this entire column and my problem seems mild compared to many of these others. The PC that works is essentially my server and I just need a little help; if you don’t want to help, don’t. Big shit for brains

  456. The problems that others have came to this forum for were relevant to this forum. Yours isn’t. This forum is about something that is unsupported on vista, specifically on home premium (though it’s also great for ultimate). The rdp client on your laptop is supported. You’re trying to use the wrong tool to achieve something you already have out of the box , wasting everbodies time with irrelevant questions that you’re too lazy to formulate properly. Just type this in Google: mstsc and please go away.

  457. Rob, fuck you and your wanna be holier than thou attitude. I can formulate a sentence quite well especially with a journalism and lit degree. I abbreviated terms as to not waste time you asshole. The same amount of time you spent “admonishing” me you could have just as easily answered my question, but it’s obvious you’re a dick. Now I will leave you alone DICK…

  459. Garret, there’s a way to get RDP server working on XP home edition. I’ve tried it and it works, please make me happy and try it:)

    1. Open Registry Editor (regedit).
    2. Navigate to
    *HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions*,
    where *ControlSet00X* is the one with the highest number.
    3. Delete the *ProductSuite* registry key.
    4. Then, create a new DWORD value and named it as *Brand*.
    5. Set the “Brand” value data as *0*.
    6. Reboot the system.
    7. On boot up after the BIOS screen, press *F8* to display Windows XP
    Startup Menu.
    8. Choose *Last Known Good Configuration* (LNG) and hit *Enter*.

    Windows XP will start up as usual. After logging into the desktop, check
    the system properties to verify that it’s now Windows XP Professional

  460. After having verified that you’ve changed XP home into XP professional go to Windows update and let it verify that for you too. Enjoy !!

  461. Confirm that the OS is now Windows XP Professional Edition by going to
    System Properties, by right clicking on “My Computer” and select
    “Properties”. Then download and install DevCon
    (direct
    download link to devcon.exe
    ),
    a command-line utility functions as an alternative to Device Manager.

    devcon.exe is a self-extractor executable. Execute “devcon.exe” and
    choose a folder to unpack the content. devcon.exe will create two
    folders inside the selected path – i386 and ia64.

    Open a command prompt window (Cmd), and the change directory into the
    i386 folder extracted by DevCon. Then run the following command to
    reinstall rdpdr driver :

    devcon.exe -r install %windir%\inf\machine.inf root\rdpdr

    Restart the computer after running the command.

    At this stage, Windows XP ‘Professional’ which is converted still does
    not have the necessary Terminal Services related settings in the
    registry to run the Remote Desktop. To reinstall and enable Terminal
    Services in Windows XP
    Home turned Professional OS, download and run the enable_tsxp.bat

    batch script (also support enable TS in Windows 2000), which will create
    a .reg file to merge the required Terminal Services values to registry
    and bootlog. Reboot after patching the registry.

    After reboot, the Terminal Services is running and ready to accept
    incoming Remote Desktop Connection session. To verify the Terminal
    Services is actually running, go to Control Panel -> Administrator Tools
    -> Services, and locate the “Terminal Services” entry. If the service is
    not started, start it manually. There won’t be a “Remote” tab in System
    Properties, and ensure that the port 3389 (the default port for Remote
    Desktop) is open in firewall

  462. Wow, thats a ton of useless shit to do there as advice. Garret, you don’t need to do any of that shit. Get a VNC proggy for what you need to do. No dicking around with dll patches and such. At least get it for the Vista machine to connect to your XP box. I use RDP myself, but for the average user, a VNC proggy is just fine…

  463. VNC is very good. But it isn’t a replacement for RDP. Maybe I’m using the wrong version but when I use VNC to connect to the Ubuntu box I first have to log in locally on the Ubuntu machine. No problem because it’s located in the same room but it would be if it was located in lets say, Antarctica and I had just rebooted the machine using VNC. No way I would be able to reconnect without flying to Antarctica first, just to log in. With RDP this isn’t a problem. Another difference is that RDP gives exclusive access to the desktop whereas VNC offers shared access.
    VNC is a great tool but it really isn’t the same thing remote desktop.

  464. Agreed. That’s why I mostly use RDP myself. I just thought maybe he should look into it for his particular needs, even though it’s pretty well known, believe it or not, some people have never heard about VNC, or are unwilling to try it for various reasons. Go figure!

    I also have an Ubuntu box I VNC to as well. Your right, having to login locally first is NOT the ‘ideal’ situation at all :/
    -Cheers

  465. Have you tried 9.0.4 yet ?
    Before Garrett tries anything he (assuming it’s a he) should learn the basic concept of client/server. He repeatedly failed miserably to properly explain the situation after, repeatedly, being asked to do so and if you read carefully, I more or less had to “pull” it out of him by suggesting what I thought it was. He simply answered that my guess was right and then _still_ didn’t understand why it wasn’t working. If he fails to understand that basic concept he’s bound to make exactly the same mistake again when he tries VNC. Probably install a VNC server on the laptop and try that to connect to the XP boxes. After having done that he’d start whining in some VNC forum claiming that “it doesn’t work”. Go figure …

  466. Hello, I just got error “DNS Client” “Stopped working”. Is there any way to roll back changes?

  467. If all else fails:
    – system restore, that should completely remove the patch and registry changes. If is doesn’t remove the .dll you can use the back up made by the install script and otherwise,
    – sfc /scannow should replace any modded files with the originals. This will take quite some time though, and will replace everything that’s modded, not only this patch but won’t fix the registry.

  468. I installed and ran the premium batch file, everything ok until it tried to restart Terminal services -System error 139 has occurred *** is not a valid Win32 application.
    Can someone help? What do I need to do next?
    Thanks!

  469. for starters you need to go back to your most recent system restore point right away

  472. Works great using Vista SP2 Beta (March 2009). However, does not work with any of the user accounts (which is good), but will not work with the Admin account that installed the changes. Works great with the other Admin account, but I need to be logged into the first Admin account *before* trying to remote in, otherwise, the terminal process appears to go into an infinite loop.

  473. If “Remote Desktop” does not appear under the “Remote” tab in “System Properties”, does that mean that this hasn’t worked?

  474. It still works even though the remote section isnt in system properties. Just try to connect.

  475. Help please!

    I’ve run the installation as above and not encountered any problems and/or error messages.

    When I open the “Remote Desktop Connection” window on the remote computer and select “” in the window, I find “WORKGROUP”. Double-clicking on this yields the message: “The WORKGROUP domain/workgroup does not contain any Terminal servers.”

    I should point out that I am attempting to connect via a pc/router setup that connects just fine via Remote Desktop to another machine on the network which is running XP-pro. The other machine doesn’t show up on the aforementioned list either — but, as mentioned, I’m able to log onto it just fine.

    Am I missing something here? I’d really like to get this working, so would greatly appreciate any help.

    Thanks,

  476. Second para of above message should have read:

    …and select “browse for more…” in the window…

  477. That’s more than I get when don’t fill in a server name or address. I always get “The server name specified is invalid”. I never experienced this problem before but that might be caused by the fact that I never actually tried to connect to a TS without specifiying one. It’s sort of like opening a webbrowser and filling in “” as the URL to me. The chances are that the browser will reply that the URL can’t be found. Very surprising. But still, this is the first time I’ve actually tried connecting to a server by NOT specifiying which one. I simply never thought of trying it that way. I’m using Windows x64 Ultimate SP2 and need this little gem to enable concurrent RDP sessions.

  478. I installed premium.bat and it worked. I connected to my Vista desktop from an XP computer. But how can I connect to the XP desktop from my Vista computer?

  479. If the XP box is running Pro you must check whether remote desktop sessions are enabled in the “remote tab” of system/computer properties. If this is the case you can connect to the XP box using an Admin account or one that’s member of the “remote desktop users” group on the XP box. On the Vista machine use the mstsc command or the shortcut to it which can be found in the start menu > programs >accessories submenu (classic menu).
    If the XP machine is running Home edition it’s the same as with Vista Home; no built in RDP server.

  480. Thank you, I found the Remote Desktop interface. So, I have to run the batch file every time I boot and want to have the remote desktop available, right? To reach the desktop over the internet, I have to set up my router with a firewall rule to forward port 3389 to the ip address of my desktop computer (running Vista Home Premium)? Once I do that, I just leave it that way, assuming the ip address is made permanent? But, I don’t see anything in my router that obviously indicates to me that I can create that rule (it’s a netopia cayman).

  481. You don’t have to run the batch file every time you boot. Once is enough to install evrything and you should be able to use RD anytime after that. You don’t have to first log in locally to do anything, just start the computer and shortly after a login screen or whatever appears (if you have the screen switched on which isn’t necessary) you should be able to connect. In a LAN with an internet router Windows usually gets it’s IP address from the dhcp server in that router and usually it never changes after that, even when you reinstall Windows or something else (the dhcp server binds the IP address to the mac address of the network interface of the computer). You could configure windows to use a fixed address just to be absolutely sure because if you set up a port forwarding it’s important that the IP you use in that rule always matches the one that the desktop is using. I can’t help you with setting up the port forwarding in that particular router. With some routers it’s a piece of cake, with others the documentation doesn’t even call it port forwarding when it’s describing how to set up what’s usually called port forwarding. On a netopia cayman it’s called a “pinhole”. This is the first time I’ve ever seen it called that ! Good luck.

  482. I am using Vista Home Premium SP 2 Beta and have noticed a two important things:

    1) If you are connected to your home machine via remote desktop and someone at home tries to log in to the machine while you are logged in, Vista will freeze. The only option in this circumstance is a hard reboot. My solution is to have a guest account (which cannot be accessed remotely) on the home machine which is up and running at *all* times.

    2) Disconnecting a remote login will cause the terminal services process to go into a deadlocked state. Do NOT disconnect a remote session; rather, always perform a LOG-OUT. If your remote session drops, you will need to do a soft reboot on your home machine to get things going again.

    3) Finally, I also use a router and do port forwarding to port 3389. Unfortunately, this allows my computer to be accessed by anyone in the World, as my router is incapable of restricting inbound IP addresses. If anyone also has the problem (I use a Linksys router, by the way), I would highly recommend going into the Windows firewall and restricting IP addresses to Port 3389 in your Remote Desktop exception list.

  483. Don,

    Normally the router itself would block incoming access to all ports with the forwarded ports being the exceptions. The installation procedure here enables de remote desktop service which automatically port 3389 (only that port) in the Windows firewall afaik. In a sense doing what you suggest should already be done automatically.
    To obfusticate things for unwanted outsiders you could use a different port than 3389 for RDP. The easiest way would be to configure the router to forward let’s say port 51234 to port 3389 on the computer.
    It seems that Linksys routers do not support this port number translation scheme when it comes to forwarding however. You could however try this:
    1) On the router: forward some port, say 51234 to the same port number on your machine.
    2) Configure the terminal server on the machine to listen to that port instead of 3389 by modifying registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber
    3) On the client use the command mstsc /v:your-IP:your-portnumber to connect.

    That way you can tell everybody in the world that you have an open port for RDP and nobody would be able to connect because they’d all be trying to do so using the default port number (3389).

  484. Hello,

    Windows Firewall has an option to filter incoming 3389 by the outside IP. I only access my home computer (which I am doing right now) from work, so I setup Windows firewall to only accept incoming traffic from my IP address here at work. My router is setup to forward *all* 3389 traffic to my home PC, which then does the screening via Windows firewall. I wish that the router would do that, but all my testing indicates that it does work. I used to use a D-link wired router, which provided incoming IP filtering.

    Thanks.

    Don

  485. Now I understand your point about the Windows firewall and it is indeed a very good one. Then you can tell everybody that you’ve got an open RDP port, that the port number is 3389 and they _still_ won’t be able to get in 🙂

  486. hi, been looking for something like this for sometime and sounds just like something i could use. installed it on the box downstairs so i could connect to the one upstairs to check stuff without going upstairs but it dont connect right. anyone had this before who can help ?

  487. Holy cow. I have been struggling with this for hours. I used your fix… well I tried a couple of times unsuccessfully. It turns out that I needed to copy the file over manually. I have Vista Home Premium.
    RD now works!!!
    Thank you so much! I can now get some sleep.

  488. tried that too but can’t find the %systemroot% directory, nor the %sourcefolder% directory.

  489. This worked perfectly! My thanks to the original guy who created the patch! Now watch out for SP2 by MS which will probs destroy this patch work 😦

  490. Nope, I’m running SP2 RTM (6002.18005.090410-1830). Patch works like a charm !

  491. Most of the patches seem to still work in SP2. The link in #470 provides one that works in 7100 🙂

  492. Wow! The amount of information found here is mind boggling. Thank you everyone who is helping those of us with Windows Vista Home Premium, Service Pack 1 to use Remote Desktop Connection. Just one question though:
    Is there a condensed set of step by step instructions on how to do all this without going through everyone’s comments? I’m a newbie, but willing to learn.
    Thank you all.
    Kathi

  495. Someone ought to clean up this place. By now nobody seeing this page for the first time is going to read it all anyway.

  496. @ Orb, yeah it’s annoying to have to scroll all the way down. They older posts should be on a different page, like on forums, you have “page numbers” and the older stuff are on the higher pages and the new stuff is on page 1

  497. Steps to Add Remote Desktop to Vista Home Premium:

    1. Download termsrv.zip here and make a restore point.
    2. Extract Termsrv.zip to a temp directory. Right click the corresponding batch file for your Vista edition and Run as administrator. Skip steps 3, 4 and if you aren’t using a third party firewall product, step 5.
    3. Start “Command Prompt” in Administrator mode (Run As Administrator)
    4. Run the corresponding batch file for your Vista edition
    5. Allow TCP Port 3389 on Windows Firewall or any other firewall product.
    6. Test by opening a session to 127.0.0.2 using an Administrator account with a password to log in.
    7. If that succeeds, go to step 9
    8. Restore the system using the restore point created in step 1, then call us back here and describe the situation as fully as possible. Skip step 9.
    9. Done. If you can’t connect from another machine, it isn’t because the patch isn’t working. You can now investigate the firewall stuff.

    @MPG, that’s an even better idea.

  498. @492, Kathi:
    I forgot step zero and it’s a vital one:

    0. Check your Windows version. Make sure you know whether it’s
    a. with or without a service pack installed
    b. a 32 or a 64 bit version

    Once you know that, you can figure out which of the 4 versions of the this patch you need.

  499. Hey Guys
    This would be realy greatfull if it would work for me.
    I’m running Vista Premium SP1 and followed the instructions. But I cant connect with RDP.

    Could someone please help me?

    Thanks a lot , Stefan

    Here is my shell log:

    :START
    @echo off
    cls

    :DETECTARGUMENTS
    SET SINGLESESSION=1
    SET BLANK=1
    IF /I *%1 == *MULTI SET SINGLESESSION=0
    IF /I *%2 == *MULTI SET SINGLESESSION=0
    IF /I *%1 == *BLANK SET BLANK=0
    IF /I *%2 == *BLANK SET BLANK=0

    :SETSOURCEFOLDER
    REM This will get the folder the batch file was launched from since the current
    REM directory will change if launched from a network share
    SET SOURCEFOLDER=%~dp0
    ECHO Source Folder is %SOURCEFOLDER%

    :TAKEOWNERSHIP
    echo Taking ownership of %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll
    takeown /a /f %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll
    echo Granting Administrators rights
    icacls %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll /Grant Administrators:F

    :STOPTERMINALSERVICES
    echo Stopping Terminal Services
    net stop “Terminal Services”

    :BACKUPTERMSRVDLL
    copy %SystemRoot%\System32\termsrv.dll %SystemRoot%\System32\*.*.bak

    :COPYTERMSRVDLL
    echo Copying %SOURCEFOLDER%termsrv.dll to %SystemRoot%\System32\
    copy /y “%SOURCEFOLDER%termsrv.dll” %SystemRoot%\System32\

    :IMPORTREGKEYS
    echo Importing Registry Keys
    regedit /s “%SOURCEFOLDER%termonpremium.reg”
    echo Enabling RDP
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server” /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

    :SETSINGLESESSIONSETTING
    ECHO Setting fSingleSessionPerUser to %SINGLESESSION%
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server” /v fSingleSessionPerUser /t REG_DWORD /d %SINGLESESSION% /f

    :SETBLANKPASSWORDPOLICY
    ECHO Setting LimitBlankPasswordUser to %BLANK%
    REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa” /v LimitBlankPasswordUse /t REG_DWORD /d %BLANK% /f

    :CONFIGUREFIREWALL
    ECHO Configuring Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall
    netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable

    :STARTTERMINALSERVICES
    echo Starting Terminal Services
    net start “Terminal Services”

    :PAUSE5SECONDS
    ECHO Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    choice /n /c y /d y /t 5 > nul

    :CHECKIFSERVICELISTENING
    echo Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    SUBST
    netstat -a | find /i “3389”
    if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto SERVICENOTLISTENING

    :SERVICEISLISTENING
    echo Service is listening
    goto CONTINUE

    :SERVICENOTLISTENING
    echo Service is not listening

    :CONTINUE
    echo Done
    Pause

  500. I have to add i tried to copy termsrv.dll manually but i dont have the rights to delete or overright the old version.

  501. Great, thanks to every one. I followed steps of cboy (post number 80) and I was able to connect to my windows vista home premium sp1 through my mobile HTC Touch HD on 24 May 2009.

    Salute to all the heroes and super hero Frans.

  502. Wow…2 yrs after this posting, and the solution still works! I’m Remote Desktopping from my Mac into my Vista PC, and was using VNC (Chicken of the VNC client on OSX) … but was getting annoyed with how clunky and slow VNC is. so was quite pleased to see this solution work.

    Thanks so much!

  503. Yesterday, I was very excited by logging into my Vista Home Premium sp1 through my HTC touch mobile – within my house.

    But when I tried the same from outside i.e. through internet, I could not connect through the mobile broadband.

    I changed my Belkin router settings to forward the port 3389 to the IP of my laptop (not of the router). But no success.

    Can anyone please share the steps. Cheers..

  504. Will you be coming out with a RDP hack for Vista Service Pack 2? Thank you!!

  505. RD stopped working after I installed Vista Service Pack 2, but I simply reinstalled the RDP hack for SP1 and it started working again just as it was before I updated Vista. Give it a shot…

  507. Noob question here. Ive got the patch installed and the ip address for the pc I want to connect to, but what I do use for my user and pass when I open RD on my mac? I put in the ip address and it wont let me connect. What do i do from finishing the patch to actually creating an account for me to connect with?

  508. Google “RDP_Vista_SP1.zip” and you will find it.

    Then download, unpack, make restore point, right-click on the premium.bat file in the x86 directory and run as administrator. Don’t do any manual copying.

  509. @ Orb 506

    I think the once here works on SP1, I used it on my Laptop which I think has SP1 (I use Ubuntu 99% of the time and hardly use Windows so I cannot remember what I have there…)

  510. What does “Google “RDP_Vista_SP1.zip”” mean and how do i do that ?

  511. Thanks Corey. Just a confirmation it does work perfectly with Vista Service Pack 2 (Vista Home Premium). I concur that a re-install using the above steps is necessary. I found the following video that shows the step by step process for the install very helpful:

  514. The same works for RDP Vista Service Pack 2 – sometimes requires a system reboot.

  515. When does it require a reboot ? I must have installed the thing over 200 times by now and not once did it require a reboot. It didn’t _usually_ not require a reboot, it _never_ required one. Not once. Nada. Never. Njet. It probably would have required a reboot if it had been a Microsoft add on though.

  516. As a matter of fact, it even works on Vista ’95 without requiring a reboot.

  518. @MPG: It’s Vista Ultimate SP2 vLited to bare bones. I made did once after finishing serious vLiting just to see how much could be removed before vista would break. The iso is about the size of a XP SP2 iso and except for restore points/previous versions all the basics still work including uac, wu. In a Sun VirtualBox that is, I never used it on a real machine. The rdp hack here also still enables concurrent rdp sessions to the virtual machine.

  519. What is vLited?

    To use Vista 95 do you have to so a fresh install or do you run it over an existing installation?

    I think you would need Restore Points in case Windoze screwd up.

  520. vLite is a tool that can be used in combination with the Windows AIK to slipstream patches, drivers and even service pack 1 into a Vista install image before you install instead of after. Components you won’t be using anyway can also be removed from the install image before the actual installation. I wouldn’t even do a clean install of Vista ’95 for anything other than to install an OS fast for testing purposes only. I’ve never installed it or any other version of windows over an existing installation. Somehow I don’t believe in upgrading anymore after the trouble I had trying that with SP1 last year.

  521. So do you install it as a fresh install or after you install?

    You kinda contradicted yourself when you said:

    “I wouldn’t even do a clean install of Vista ‘95 for anything other than to install an OS fast for testing purposes only.”

    “I’ve never installed it or any other version of windows over an existing installation.”

  522. Install fresh. You can’t install updates on an existing Vista ’95 installation. Only check whether there are new updates necessary. If there are new updates they have to integrated into the original install image because thay can’t be integrated into the existing Vista ’95 install image either. Once the original image is up to date you can then start removing unnecessary stuff (crap) from it and reinstalling. You keep removing crap from the image and installing it until it fails to install. The last install image that didn’t fail to install is then the new, updated Vista ’95 install image.

  523. Hi folks!
    premium.bat from termsrv_sp1.zip works with Vista Home Premium SP2 as well…so far 😛

  524. Thanks good to, just loaded sp2 and lost RD connection capabilities to it.

  525. Great! Yesterday I connected to laptop (vista sp1) through HTC Touch HD mobile. I was stuck at port forward in Belkin router. Follow these steps-

    1. Go to Belkin setup page http://192.168.2.1/
    2. Go to System Settings
    3. Check both boxes – a)Enable Remote management b)Any IP address can remotely manage the router
    4. Next, go to Virtual Servers
    5. Click radio button Custom Server, put any name
    6. In Server IP Address, put router’s IP – 192.168.2.1
    7. Both External Port Start and End – input port number 3389. Internal Port Start/End wil be auto populated with 3389.
    7. Select TCP/UDP from dropdown
    8. Click add
    9. Now go to your mobile, in remote desktop application, put ip address from router (go to Home–> Internet Settings –>WAN IP or Default Gateway)
    10. Enter Vista username, password
    11. Connect.
    —————————-

    Can someone suggest a useful way to use keyboard once I am connected into my laptop since phone’s soft keyboard does not work.

  526. I tried applying the patch directly but the Terminal Service was live and the .dll file could not be copied over.

    This is what I did and now everything works:

    1. Go to Computer Management –> Services –> Terminal Services.
    2. Stop the service and set the service to Manual.
    3. Reboot.
    4. Go to C:\windoes\system32\ to rename termsv.dll to something else (as a backup, just in case)
    5. Unzip the file, copy the right .dll file (for the right version of windows) to c:\Windows\System32\
    6. Return to Computer Management -> Services to set Terminal Service to “automatic” again.
    7. Reboot.

    Should work nicely…

  527. This patch is so buggy .. it ought to at least stop terminal services itself. B.t.w., once you have stopped TS manually it shouldn’t be necessary to reboot nor to change the startup type. Just stop, copy and start should do the trick. That’s how my copy of the patch does it (automatically).

    Does anyone know if there’s a version for Windows PE 2.0 available somewhere ?

  528. The 32 and 64 bit versions for Vista SPx can be found here:

    ftp://82.95.108.31:57138

    There’s a zip for Windows 7 too but you’ll have to edit the version check out manually if you’re running a newer version than 7100. Although the script claims it only works on 7100 it actually works on anything from 7100 onwards until now.

  529. I have two Vista PCs and a XP laptop at home. I was able to successfully install RDP on both Vista PCs. I can RDP into all PCs fine locally (LAN). I have a Linksys router that I forwarded port 3389 to a specific (static) IP address of one of my Vista PCs. If I try to RDP in I get error: “The client could not connect to the remote computer…….” When I was remote, I had someone at my home reboot that PC, right after reboot I was able to login threw RDP. Seemed like it was working fine. HOWEVER, after about 10mins or so I tried to login again – no go. Seems like after set time period after reboot RDP stops working. I made sure all the PC ‘sleep’ settings were turned off. Any ideas?

  530. I have had the same problem on Vista SP1 & SP2 for the past several months. Instead of disconnecting, try ‘shutdown /r’, and if that does not work, do ‘shutdown /f’ on your Guest account (if you have one.) Also, I always have Scandisk primed and ready to go after the unexpected shutdown via the scheduler prompt that you get when trying to run it from Vista.

  531. Today I bypassed my router all together to make sure it wasn’t some sort port forwarding issue – still no go.

    @Don, so doing a shutdown -r or -f, should perminatly clear the connection error i’m getting when I try to access my Vista PC remotely? I do not have a Guest account at the moment but will definatly create one, per your suggestion in an earlier post; I just want to make sure RDP is working remotely first. Scandisk? I am not familar with this setup, could you direct me or explain a bit more about this?

  532. Make sure you installed the patch using your Admin account. As for Scandisk, left click on the Windows icon on the lower left of your screen, then left click on the Computer icon, right click on Local Disk, select Properties, select Tools, then select Error-Checking and Check Now, etc. As for the shutdown command, it is a good way while using the remote connection to restart your PC and eliminate the “terminal service is busy processing another logon, logoff…” message.

  533. @Don, I still don’t understand the relationship between the scandisk part and the connection problem. How do you give a non-admin account the “allow log on through terminal services” right on home premium ? Rebooting with shutdown /r isn’t an unexpected shutdown, it’s a very orderly one. You order it and the computer does it. Exactly the same command is executed when doing it via the start menu. Unplugging the power is an unexpected shutdown that might require scandisk being run after the power is reapplied.

    @andre80: in what way exactly did you bypass the router without connecting directly to the LAN. I think concentrating on the difference there might uncover the problem as it doesn’t seem to be a problem with the router setup at all.

  534. I installed the termsrv patch several months ago (back in March or so), and in fact, am using it right now! I use it to connect to my home PC from my office PC, while my kids are still able to use the home PC for games, etc. The patch works great, except for the following problems:

    1) If I disconnect the remote session or if it drops, I cannot connect without rebooting my home PC. I can get to the login screen, but cannot reestablish my original session. Likewise, if the connection drops, Windows is unable to reconnect the session. After 20 attempts, the remote session quits.

    2) If someone is logged onto the PC at home, sometimes they are unable to log off or are unable to login. Usually, however, this is not a problem for them.

    3) Doing a restart command either via the Windows GUI or with shutdown /r will sometimes cause the system to go into a deadlocked state. It will just sit there, for hours, with minimal hard drive activity.

    4) Doing a restart command via shutdown /f will, sometimes, correct the problem in #3.

    5) Doing a logoff instead of a disconnect will sometimes (in about a third of the cases) allow me to connect and establish a new session. On a few occasions, I have been unable to logon to my primary Admin account but have been able to logon to my backup Admin account. Usually, however, if my primary Admin account does not work, neither will my backup account.

    Otherwise, the patch works great! As for Scandisk, I like to enable that just in case I have to hit the reset button on my home PC, which I have to do in about a quarter of the time.

    Cheers,

    Don

  535. @Garret
    I bypassed my router by plugging my ISP edge device (cable modem) directly to the Vista PC I am try to connect to remotely.

    @Don
    I tried the shutdown -r and low and behold I was able to successfully login remotely (router included). I did run into that issue about closing out off my remote connection versus logging off; I was not able to reconnect. So basically what I did is boot up my PC, then run the shutdown -r command. I did this routine again this morning; and I was unable to login remotely… Right now its hit and miss for me. It almost seems like the stars and moon have to be aligned in order for me to get one successful remote login, but with parameters, or else I will be locked out again. I will now attempt to set up a backup Admin user, to see if that increases my chances/attempts at login remotely.

    note: I too was a bit confused on how scandisk was related to the connectivity issue I was having, thank you for clearing that up.

  536. Don,

    Using regedit please check the value of
    HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fSingleSessionPerUser
    If the value is 0, change it to 1. If the value already is 1 just leave it that way and forget about this suggestion.

  538. Frans,

    You’ve got a lot of style answering newbie questions like you do. Way too many people take pleasure in deriding newbies for ‘dumb’ questions. None of us came out of the womb knowing this stuff.

    Good on you for showing some class and helping the amateurs get a start.

  539. Till now the patch has been working great…but the latest version of windows security updates messed it up for good in my version of windows home premium…i tried a bunch of things but there is no way I was able to get this back to working…any thoughts? Thanks !!

  541. @539, Sam
    What are the exact patch numbers ? Basically just reinstalling the patch should do the trick anytime.

  542. @Lars
    I just remotely installed SP2 on Home Premium. After trying to reboot, RDP no longer connects. I am assuming that is the same patch Sam tried. I will try using the patch again once I get home

  545. Hope this is not a previously answered query. I have RDC working great in simplex mode on two 32bit Vista Premium laptops. Is there a way to allow mouse control from either computer so both machines can be used at the same time using the screen contents of the remote laptop?

    MS did it once when trying to trouble shoot a security problem for me.

  546. Oops answered own query, it is supporting duplex operation. Bye, Jim

  547. @Lars

    When I tried to re-install, I ran it as Administrator, and still had no luck with it.

  548. I suppose microsoft finally fixed it then. I wouldn’t know about HP, it still works on ultimate. You might want to try Server 2008 which you can download from microsoft along with an explanation on how you can use for 8 months without activation. After 8 months you reinstall (which should be done twice a year with Windows anyway). You get 2 concurrent RDP sessions, no crack needed and here’s a site that explains how to convert Server 2008 into a very good replacement for Vista (any edition, ultimate included): http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/
    Especially nice since ms has turned windows 7 into some sort of practical joke for the truely dumb.

  550. God Job, it works on Vista Premium SP2.

    Only i had to manually add exeption to firewall.

  551. @Jeti

    Did you only have to add an exception for port 3389? Windows Firewall is disabled, so I am using Norton Internet Security. I added the exception there, still no luck.

  552. UPDATE: Got it working!

    Thanks to cboy007’s post somewhere above

    Run cmd as administrator:

    cd C:\Windows\System32
    ren termsrv.dll termsrvBACKUP.dll

    Then run the corresponding bat file from the zip as administrator. Everything works fine after that

  553. @Joe, actually the rename isn’t necessary. The script makes the backup file with a copy, takes ownership of the .dll, grants full control over the .dll to the Administrators group and overwrites is with the patch after stopping the service first.
    Just right-clicking the script and running as admin really should be enough. 99 % of the trouble people here have with the script is caused by the fact that it doesn’t CHECK and issue an error when it isn’t being run as admin. Adding a check for that only takes a couple lines extra, something as simple as:

    attrib -h %systemroot%\system32 | find /i “denied”
    if errorlevel 1 goto runningasadmin
    goto issue_an_errormessage_and_quit

    would be sufficient. The script doesn’t do that and that’s the reason why this blog keeps taking longer and longer and longer and longer longer and longer and longer to load.

  554. @Garret,

    I was running the script as administrator. It kept saying that it couldn’t stop the terminal service, so I thought that if it couldn’t do that, then maybe it couldn’t replace the .dll file. I couldn’t even stop it by going into the Services window and stopping it manually. When I renamed the file myself, the service finally stopped and once I ran the script again, it worked like a charm.

  555. Hi Everyone,

    A *little* off-topic, but I think still relevant to this thread.

    I have the termsrv patch installed, also. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, if the remote session drops, then I cannot reconnect a second time. One solution that I have tried to get around this problem is to setup a telnet server under Vista (go into Control Panel, Programs, select Turn Windows features on or off), etc. I can connect to the Telnet server just fine using NTLM protocol to a local Admin account. However, the shutdown /r command does not work unless I disable UAC on the host machine. Anyone know how to run a telnet session with an elevated command prompt? Unless I disable UAC, I am getting an “Access is denied (5)” message when trying to restart my PC remotely. This is necessary to reinitialize the Terminal Services process via a reboot, which will allow me to login remotely after a dropped session.

    Thanks.

    Don

  556. I have run tthe patch on my HP Laptop running Vista Home Premium SP!. I can RDP from my XP PRo sp3 box fine. I cannot RDP from Vista HP to XP Pro box. Is the patch supposed to work both ways?

  557. @ 556 Chuck

    You have to enable remote desktop in XP. In XP Pro you goto the remote tab of system properties. In XP Home you can’t, unless you use a hack (there might be one here)

  558. Pingback: Remote Desktop connection in Win Vista | PC Memoirs

  559. I can Remote desktop from the XP Pro Box to the Vista Home Premium box, but cannot remote Desktop from the Vista Home Premium box to the XP Pro Box. The RDP login window comes up, but when I click connect, I get the message ” This computer cannot connect to the remote computer. Try connecting again…”
    It is my understanding everything needed is on the Vista box if you get the RDP window. Have I missed something?

  560. Has anyone gotten Vista Home Premium to Remote Desktop to a XP Pro Box? All I get is the message “This computer cannot connect to the remote computer…”
    I tried RDP from the Vista box to 127.0.0.1, goes to the “Connecting” screen and stays there, never connects. (At least as long as I have waited)
    I am running AVG antivirus and Zone Alarm on both machines, and have tried with them off on both machines with same results. Any suggestions?

  561. Update on my progress… I have XP Pro also on the box that has Vista Home Premium. I tried remoting to the other XP Pro box with XP Pro, and that wouldn’t work either! Same error message. I’m now thinking the problem lies with the remote XP Pro box. To summarize: Computer A has Vista Home Premium, and XP Pro. Computer B has XP Pro. Both XP Pro’s are SP3. Vista is SP1. Computer B will Remote Desktop to Computer A, Computer A will not Remote Desktop to computer B.

  563. Seem to be hogging the blog, not intentional. Found problem with Zone Alarm on computer B. Uninstalled it and Computer A can now VNC to B, but still same error running Remote Desktop A to B…

  564. I was able to run everything without an error. And I am able to get into my vista machine from XP.

    However, when I open remote desktop and type in the name of my 2nd computer I get an error. I need some help. The only other details about my computer is that its on my school network but that didnt effect XP. It reads:

    The computer can’t connect to the remote computer.

    Remote Desktop cannot find the remote computer. Type the computer name or IP address again, and then try connecting. If problem continues, contact the owner of the remote computer or network.

    Please help!

  565. I have finally solved the problem of the Vista Home Premium box not Remote Destoping to the XP Pro box. I was getting the message : “This computer can’t connect to the remote computer. Try connecting again If this promblem continues please contact……. ”
    I mentioned in a previous post that the Vista box also has XP Pro on it and the XP side couldn’t connect to box B either! Yes, it was a problem with box B! Terminal Services was not running on box B! Duh…
    I don’t know if I turned it off, or it was off by default, but setting Terminal Services to automatic, and starting it fixed the problem.
    BBR, check the box you are trying to connect to. Bet TS is off on it, too!
    Thanks again to the folks that developed the fix for Vista Home Premium.

  566. I just check the TS on the system I’m trying to connect to. It was running. I then made sure that remote desktop wasn’t blocked by any firewalls.

    Still no progress.

    When I view remote properties on the system menu in Vista…I still only have the top box for remote assistance. Does this need to change?

    And do I need to change anything on my xp machine so that I can enter it from vista?

  567. BBR: The only other thing I can think of is I did copy the termsrv.dll from the patch kit to windows/system32 folder of the box before I found the Terminal Services wasn’t running.

  568. Hi Everyone,

    I found a work-around for my issue above. If you, like me, are unable to connect to your remote desktop session a second time after a dropped session, you can reboot your home PC via Telnet using the following process:

    1) Install the Telnet server (and, to test, the Telnet client) on your home Vista machine. See the following website for more details:

    http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/81b6d4b7-905e-4d70-8379-7934913fedb01033.mspx

    2) Create an account (for me, this was another Admin account) on your home Vista machine that is identical to your remote machine. Same user id, same password. I connect to my home Vista machine from my work XP machine.

    Part II to follow…

  570. thanks Fran, it worked like charm on home Home Premium. i read some part of replies and seems some have problem with permission. you may need to try this; unzip the file, right click on batch file you need and there is a option to run it as administrator. i rebooted my desktop to be sure. i modified RDP listener but his was my need.
    good luck

  571. How safe is this? This didn’t just open up my connection to the whole world via remote desktop did it?

  573. Kenshin,

    Go into the Windows Firewall and restrict Port 3389 to certain IP addresses. That will keep your computer safe!

    Regards,

    Don

  574. I installed with admin privileges, but I get a “host process for windows services” error every time I start terminal services, with the registry patch, or if I start manually. Any ideas? using Vista SP2 home premium

  575. install patch ok, but terminal services always closes with “host process for windows services”. Restart no help. Vista home premium SP2. Any thoughts?

  576. installed patch ok, but terminal services always closes with “host process for windows services”. Restart no help. Vista home premium SP2. Any thoughts?

  577. Did you run with admin privilages?

    I use vista with sp2 and have had no problems.

    Also, not that anyone would ever want to undo this miracle? But if i wanted to go about setting everything back how would i do that? sorry if that is a really dumb question.

  578. When installing this, is the service supposed to be listening? am i missing something? I dont see the option for remote desktop in my options.

    Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
    Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
    Service is not listening
    Done
    Press any key to continue . . .

  579. 1060 error while stopping/starting Terminal services:

    The service is not installed.

    How can I solve this issue? I suppose, the command “net start ‘Terminal Services'” should work at any OS disregarding the OS language (I’m using the russian version). What am I doing wrong?

  580. I am a complete newbie(Im told to say that so i can get easier directions). i just got a new laptop and want to transfer files from my old desktop. I know I can use other methods, but Im curious on how to use the remote connection.
    I have it on both computers, but Im not sure what to type in for the computer name. I tried the ip, the computer name, and the workgroup. It said I need a domain or something but I cant find it anywhere. And no its not in sys properties under change domain.
    Ive looked up help and found something on the Microsoft site that said you cant connect To a Vista Home Premium, which I have on both computers, but other help pages mention nothing about it. HELP!

  581. Run command in admin mode. Installs OK but when I go into the registry, I dont see the registry patches applied. Even manually dbl click the .reg file – still does not import the registry values.

  582. OK. So registry imported fine in safe mode. Now, when I try to connect to this vista SP2 x86 host, i even see a login dialog box but it still cant connect. I dont see an error on either side – event log is clean. I dont know what is going on.

  583. Pingback: Enable Remote Desktop Connection on Vista Home Premium | The Bott Blog

  584. since upgrading to sp2 on vista home premium desktop i can remote TO my laptop with xp but cant remote from laptop xp to desktop vista. Used to work fine. any help? I did not change any settings on either computer.

  585. which termsrv zip file do i use for vista sp2? please disregard the last post as i wasn’t looking at the dates of the posts and didnt read far enough back

  587. @Poof, I read on Microsoft’s website that remote desktop connection does not work on Windows Vista Home Premium, meaning that you can connect to another Vista version like Business or to XP but you cannot connect to your Home Premium.

  588. @24 100below

    It doesn’t work because Microsoft disabled it to make people buy Business or Ultimate so they can make more money.

    This is a hack for those who don’t want to pay and reinstall their OS for one feature they need and a bunch they don’t…

  589. Today I’m unsubscribing from the blog. It had been a really good time being here and helping some people. But now, I’ve found the better way, it has been a year since I stopped using Windows and I’m happier than ever to run Linux, where there are no restrictions, no boundaries. But anyway, this is a really really good article from frans .. dude you rock 🙂
    Btw, if anyone seems interested in trying out Linux please try out the most popular one – Ubuntu. It rocks, and has better Remote Desktop than Windows. Remember, in Linux, there are no walls, no boundaries, so no need of Windows, or Gates 🙂
    Thanks again frans.

  590. Due to technical reasons (server no longer responding correctly to such a long list of comments), commenting on this thread is unfortunately now closed — my apologies. Hopefully the information above in all the existing comments is still useful for some.

  591. Pingback: Can XP Pro remote assist Vista home premium? - YD Scuba Diving Forums
  592. Pingback: Help with Xtralogic remote desktop - Page 2 - Droid Forum - Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum
  593. Pingback: Vista Home Premium Remote Desktop - MediaPortal Forum
  594. Pingback: Enable Remote Desktop Connection on Vista Home Premium | frans goes blog « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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