VNC is nice for tech support kind of deals when you share screens and etc. Rdesktop is perfect for everything else.

I have been looking different protocols to solve the same problem, to connect from my Ubuntu PC to a Windows XP laptop, but not simply to access to the laptop . I tried firstly VNC and it wasn’t a bad option but when i discovered the rdesktop option i realized that it had better quality and better speed capability.

[…] Since I often deal with support calls from users I have been experimenting with various remote control tools for a while now. My favorite is by far the RDP protocol mainly because of it’s speed. Unfortunately RDP has limited use in phone support situations because it requires the end user to set up port forwarding on their router. […]

Or you could just upgrade to XP Pro and that would take care of it. From what I understand, life sucks managing and using an XP Home edition as so much is either disabled or unavailable. I installed the ActiveX web control on my web server and hit an XP Pro system on my network from the web so it is worth the less than $75 on eBay for an upgrade edition. No need for LogmeIn or GoToMyPC.

I meant the server. I would love to be able to connect to my home WinXP machine from work using RDP to check up on my torrents, see if the backup jobs are still running and etc… Unfortunately the server side is buried deep inside the guts of XP Pro and 2003. Supposedly if you copy and register bunch of DLL files from XP Pro you used to be able to get this functionality in XP home. Or so I’ve heard – never tried it myself. I saw people saying that it won’t work on SP2 machines so meh..

I wonder if you get any issues similar to mine. Now that you said you never experienced it, I’m wondering if this was something specific to my systems…

Luke,

I have only R2 versions so maybe something is different with services or security or something. I just ran through the instructions I found on-line.

Also, on your comment regarding RDP as a standalone app, if it is the client piece you are talking about, it is actually a standalone app available for download on MS’ site, I’ve installed it on Windows 2000, Windows 98, but I’ve never actually used Home edition, but if it installs on 98, I don’t see why it wouldn’t install on Home edition.

I have a couple of old computers that will only run 98 and with the RDP client, they’ve become like semi-smart thin clients.

You’ve piqued my curiosity so I’m using my XP box and installing the sshd piece of Cygwin to see if my experience is the same on XP as yours.

I can’t remember the messages anymore but they were all about sshd failing because of a missing resource, running out of memory for sshd, or to many sshd threads being initiated. Completely removed cygwin, reinstalled, set everything up and the problem seemed to be fixed.

Then it came back 2 months later actually causing my machine to freeze every 3-4 hours. Once I took down sshd it went back to normal.

I haven’t been able to track down the cause of this. I figured that the cygwin implementation of sshd is buggy, or that maybe it conflicts with some of the AV or firewall software that I usually run. :/

I have cygwin ssh running on Windows 2003 Servers and I don’t see a lot of event log entries. On one system that is connected to the Internet, there are a lot of entries of someone trying to get into the system, as sshd is reporting a closed connection with unknown user ‘root’-too funny, the would be hacker thinks this is a Unix system because it has ssh server installed! Now that’s security through obscurity!

I always have problems with sshd on windows. Tried setting up the cygwin version on different XP machines in the past, and each time they end up spamming Event Viewer with about 5 error messages per minute, and make the system unstable. Not sure why this happens, but usually after running ok for a week all shit breaks loose and I have to disable it to keep my systems usable. This has happened to me 3 times already on two different XP machines (one XP Home, one XP Pro) on two different network, and with and without being joined to a domain.

On linux nad unix however it usually works flawlessly. I really wish I could get a stable, working ssh server on a windows machine. Any suggestions?

RDP is encrypted (keyboard and mouse activity). See kb186607 for more info.

I find the best interactive control of both *nix and Windows systems to be ssh command line environment.

On Windows systems, why do you even need log on to the remote system’s desktop? Especially servers-that should be a last ditch thing to do-and only after a ssh or psexec prompt could not be made. All functions and management of Windows systems can be done via remote mangement tools which include command line versions. I also install Cygwin and UnixTools on my systems. And on most of my servers in the lab and whenever I can for those at work, I even replace the explorer shell with cmd.exe so all you get when you RDP in is a cmd.exe command shell.

So I always encourage all administrators to learn their command line tools-you’ll be glad you did!