One thing that I love about all news windows products is the remote desktop features. I previously used PCAnywhere but I find that remote desktop is now almost as good, would like to see a file transfer like PCAnywhere has, but remote desktop is free so that is a plus for it.
One of the tasks that I face with my network setup is forwarding ports through my router. There are two issues that I came across when dealing with the RDP forwarding. The first was what is the port number of RDP. With a quick search on Google I found that the standard RDP port is 3389.
Now that you have the port number you can simply go into your router and forward that port through and after enabling your remote desktop feature it will work from outside your network as long as you either know your IP address or have a dynamic dns service like I use. To enable remote desktop in Windows XP and Windows 2003 go to the start menu, find the my computer icon and right click on it. Select the properties option in the drop down list and then click on the remote tag in the window that appears. There you will see the two check boxes, check the second box, and then click on the remote user button. Make sure that the users you want to have access are in the list and then click OK until you have exitted all of the windows. RDP is now enabled on your machine.
So this simple setup would have worked for my network but the issue then became I have several servers that I want access to along with my desktop. Now I could just remote to my desktop and then remote to the other machines from there since they are all on the local network. This would create a lot of data that needed to be transferred though, with limited upstream speeds on your broadband connection you don't want this, and will cause performance issues with RDP. So I had two options, I could change the registry entry like was stated in the article. I will paste that fix here just in case that page has an issue at some point:
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WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.You can use the Remote Desktop feature in Windows XP Professional to connect to your computer from another, remote computer. WARNING: The Remote Assistance feature in Windows XP may not work properly if you change the listening port. To change the port that Remote Desktop listens on:
Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlTerminalServerWinStationsRDP-TcpPortNumber
On the Edit menu, click Modify, click Decimal, type the new port number, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor.NOTE: When you try to connect to this computer by using the Remote Desktop connection, you must type the new port.
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The other option I had was to go into my router and specify another external port number and then point that port to the 3398 on the IP address of the machine I wanted to go to. I chose this second option as it was less time consuming and did the trick for me. One appealing thing about the ability to change the port number of RDP is security. If you leave the standard port number then anyone will know to check that port to see if you have Remote Desktop enabled and potentially compromise your network. Let me know if there are any issues with the registry fix though and if there are I will just remove it from this article.
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Port ForwardingIf your Windows 7 desktop icons keep rearranging, there are various ways you can try to fix the issue. This is a problem which many people are now reporting on their Windows 7 machines, and can be caused by a number of issues inside the Windows 7 system. Fortunately, there's a simple method you can use to fix the problem for good. Here's what you need to do...
The reason why Windows 7 rearranges the icons on your desktop is because it "forgets" the layout that your icons had. Every time you reboot or shut down your computer, your icons are basically saved to a database which gives their exact positions on screen. When Windows cannot read these positions, it gets confused and basically just resorts to rearranging the entire list of icons on your desktop.
The first thing you need to do to fix this problem is to disable the "Auto Arrange Icons" feature of your system. Many computers have the auto-arrange icons option enabled on their system, which causes their computer to try and put their icons in a specific order. To fix this, you should right-click on the desktop, click on "View" and then see if "Auto-Arrange" is ticked. If it is, then untick it. This should stop the rearranging.
If your PC does not have the "auto arrange" option checked, then you should look at another option called "Align Icons To Grid". This is an option which basically links the icons to a certain part of your computer screen and if this options becomes damaged or corrupted, Windows has been known to rearrange the icons on your desktop. To fix this, you need to right-click on the desktop, click on "View" and then on "Align Icons To Grid".
After that, restart your PC and see if it's helped the problem. If it has not, then you should try using a 'registry cleaner' to clean out the registry. The registry is basically a big database which stores information and settings about your computer and keeps details like your latest emails, desktop wallpaper and even your login details inside. The registry is also responsible for keeping your desktop icons position, and is often the case that many registry options will become damaged or corrupted, leading Windows to rearrange your desktop icons. You should try using a 'registry cleaner' to scan through this database and fix any of the damaged or corrupted files that are inside it, which should resolve your icons issue.
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