Remote Desktop Question

Hi everyone,

I have been researching for a bit on how to control my desktop using my laptop with the remote desktop function and I am still confused. I have always gotten good answers here so I decided to ask here.

First of all, I am running vista home premium on my laptop and I believe xp home on my desktop. So my question is, is it possible to to use my laptop to control my desktop (preferably wirelessly) using the remote desktop? My dream objective is to somehow use the laptop to control the desktop without all the extra stuff (monitor, keyboard, mouse...) that comes with the desktop.

Hopefully that make sense.

Thanks in advance.

 

I don't believe XP Home has a remote desktop client nor does Vista home premium. There are several options you can use though. Most namely one of the VNC clients. I think UltraVNC is the best. Another is logmein.com. I was really suprised at how well it worked. Both of these options are free.


Steve

 

Well in my start menu under all prgrams -> accessories, there is a program called remote desktop connection. I figured that is what I could use to do this, but I tried to set it up with some help from online, but the sites I saw mentioned options that I did not have.

 

Only a computer with XP Pro, Vista Business, or Vista Ultimate can be logged into using Windows Remote Desktop.

 

Vista HP can remote desktop OUT but it cannot do IN.

Im not sure if XP home allows RDP in. Go to your XP machine, find out the IP and type it in the Vista remote desktop.

 

XP Home can be controlled (client), but can not be the controller, (requires XP Pro for that).

 

So what I have gathered here from everyone is that my vista home can be the controller and xp home can be controlled. If so, that is excellent news and exactly what I wanted to do!

 

no.

your desktop with xp home does not have the server portion to be logged in to. you would need xp pro to use that.

try using a free vnc program like ultraVNC or realVNC.

 

You cannot connect to an XP Home or .Vista Home Edition computer w/ out doing some type of third party hacking. But you can use .Vista Home as a "Client" to connect to another machine running XP Pro for example.

 

Not so. You can obtain the Remote Desktop client for XP Home (It's built into Pro). In point of fact, as indicated in this Wikipedia article, the Remote Desktop client is built into all versions of XP and Vista.

If the desktop is running XP-Pro, the the server component (aka Terminal Services server) will be built-in as well (it's not built into the Home version of XP, and I don't know about the various flavors of _Vista).

So, if the OP has XP Pro running on the desktop, he will, without futher ado, be able to remotely control his desktop through his laptop (including over a wireless connection - just hardwire the desktop into one of the four wired ethernet LAN connections on the back of the router). I know for a fact that this works because that's how I remotely control my ersatz home "server" which is comprised of an old _Dell running XP Pro that I have hidden behind some furniture and run with only the box itself (I keep a spare keyboard and mouse for those few times when I need to directly access the desktop itself), and I run the Remote Desktop client from my laptop (which was originally running XP Home when I set things up, but which is now also running XP Pro), which connects to my home network via my wireless router.

 

anyone can download the RDP client. just not the server.