Remote Desktop on Winxp Home edition

Ok I know you want to do it, but you can't. Winxp Pro has Remote Desktop built in, and you are going to Google till you drop to find the hidden mysteries of how you connect to WinXP Home, remotely.

You can't

Nope

Not without going to a third party application. Now BEFORE YOU START whining about, "Oh I don't want to install a third party program to make it work, because these review people have systems they can ruin....whine whine whine..........blimey, don't you go on........etc etc". Let me tell you, I was RIGHT THERE with you on that one, until the recent cold spell made me WANT to access the WinXP Home machine from elsewhere...(meaning from a laptop, while still pathetically tucked up in bed)

The answer was REAL simple.

There is a place called Real VNC who have free (YES FREE) software you can download and install. Take it from me, it was really painless.

You have two components.
A server
A client.

The server is the machine waiting to be connected TO. The client is the machine that comes to visit. One bit of software goes on one, and on the other, the er... other. Within two minutes from downloading the software, I had remote desktop connections going on between TWO Winxp Home PC's.

So lets go over this again children. You install the SERVER software on the machine you want to connect to, which will run on startup and even before you are logged into WinXP. So no need to start the software or set something going, IN CASE you think you might want to remotely control the computer. It only has to be switched on.

On the other computer, the client (or connecting PC), you just run a little program each time. No install of software at all!

The one good thing is that when you install the server software on the computer, it will never start, unless there is a password set up. So as well as being safe, if you are REALLY paranoid about people getting onto your system, and you cannot just switch off, you can remove the password for added protection.

The only options in WinXP home (apart from other software I don't know about) is to initiate a controlling session from the computer itself. Meaning with XP Home, you normally have to be sitting at the very PC you want to remote control, to be able to control it! Sort of not really very effective.

Oh and for those of you with more than Windows, it will connect anything, to anything else. Go on, try it!



A desktop yesterday (not mine)

Remote Desktop Specifics
Connecting to multiple machines behind the same firewall!