I needed a solution for users with remote desktop disabled. If your remote user has administrator access to their machine, have them click on Start – Run and type:
netsh firewall set service remoteadmin enable
netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable
[note: remoteadmin = remote administration, while remotedesktop = remote assistance and remote desktop]
You can also enable remote desktop over the network via regedit if you have administrator rights to the remote machine:
1. Run Regedit
2. Select File –> Connect Network registry
3. Enter the name of the remote computer and select Check Name
4. At the bottom of the registry tree you will see 2 Hives appear Hkey_Local_Machine and
Hkey_Users (under the remote computer’s name)
5. Goto hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server\FdenyTSConnections=1
6. Change the FdenyTSConnections to 0
7. Attempt to Re-Login
This worked okay, but I like to implement the most elegant solution possible.
So I fired up the command line on my local machine, and used psexec to configure the firewall service on the remote machine via netsh. The users never even knew I was working on their computer, which is fine by me.
To enable remote access to a machine via the command line, type:
psexec \\remotecomputername netsh firewall set service remoteadmin enable
psexec \\remotecomputername netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable
If you aren’t familiar with the PStools suite of utilities have a look and let me know.
it is also useful in an active directory environment to set a policy forcing remote desktop to be enabled for all machines.