Thread: Remote Desktop Connection Problem

I am looking for some ideas on how to troubleshoot an RDC problem. I can ping the Terminal Server and I know its not a license related problem however, I cannot connect. I receive the generic cannot connect error. It is from a windows 2000 professional laptop with no firewall. Other machines on the network can connect.

Any ideas would be a great help.

I have been working through the unsuccessful Remote Desktop Connection issue for the last 6 hours and finally solved the problem. (At least on my system.) My problem system was running Windows Server 2003. I triple checked all my Remote Desktop Connection settings, verified the relevant services were running, and tried all of the ping tests with successful results. Everything was setup and should have been working perfectly but I still couldn’t connect to the system from any of the other systems on my network. I decided the next logical step would be to try and verify that the Remote Desktop Connection components were not corrupted. So on a whim I tried to connect to the problem computer with Remote Desktop Connection from the problem computer itself. (If you do this on a Windows Server 2003 System and the attempt is successful, your current Windows session show is uninterrupted. If you try this on a Windows XP machine however, and the attempt is successful, you will be logged out of your current windows session. Either way it should help in determining if the RDC components are valid and if your settings are correct.) I was able to successfully establish a Remote Desktop Connection. This was surprising to me. My thoughts then went to a firewall\port issue. In the Control Panel I went to the Windows Firewall and then the Exceptions Tab. For some reason the Remote Desktop Connection was unchecked. I checked it making Remote Desktop Connection an Exception to the Windows Firewall rules, click OK, and the problem was solved.

Make sure your Local Policies have not been changed. Click Start, Run, secpol.msc. Expand Local Policies and click User Rights Assignment. In the right pane, double-click Allow logon through Terminal Services. Make sure that Administrators and Remote Desktop Users are listed.

Note - If you're on a domain, check group policy since it overrides local policies.