Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Multiple Remote Desktop Connections (RDC) XP not working

If you have tweaked around with Windows XP you probably know that its possible to connect to another system across a network, intranet / internet as a remote user with the same interface as sitting on the system.

The capability is bundled with XP pro and I'm sure that you will find enough and more blogs / tutorial about how it works with screenshots and all. The issue is that its not available in XP Home and in XP Pro it allows only one user to work on the computer.

Based on my searches I believe its also possible to hack XP Home to support RDC, though I haven't tried it myself the following link does have all the details that you could possibly need to try this out.

http://www.geekport.com/2007/08/15/enabling-remote-desktop-in-xp-home/

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/06/14/install-and-enable-remote-desktop-in-windows-xp-home-edition/

Now to the problem in XP pro , as mentioned earlier , the licencing agreement of MS allows only one user to access the computer so if you RDC to a computer the existing user gets logged out (not desirable). There is a way of overcoming this issue with some registry changes and a changed Terminal Service Dynamic Link Library (termserv.dll).

There are detailed article on the procedure available below

http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/06/13/enable-multiple-concurrent-remote-desktop-connections-or-sessions-in-windows-xp/

Additional some good soul has also written a program that neatly makes all these changes and also patches the termserv.dll the link for that is

http://www.kood.org/terminal-server-patch/

For most of the people in the world doing all this worked just fine and if you have tried and are successful good for you .... but then again there are those who are not so fortunate in life such as me who after trying out each and everything on all the links that I have posted including the application got nothing to work. The main user still got logged out each time I tried to RDC to the system.

After more googling I came across this obscure little package called
TermSrvNoRestrPatch-1-3

The location of the file is as following

http://ice-club.com.ua/antiwpa/Other/TermSrvNoRestrPatch-1-3/

which was also a real pain to find a valid link for it. It worked like a charm, it step by step patched all the file which the other application also did but this one got it to work ! It also patched the capability to RDC to a local host, yes there are a few reason why someone would want to do something like this :) such as running multiple instances of a single program.

A word of caution, since the code edits few of the windows' files, some antivirus programs through it up as a virus. You may need to run this in safemode if your antivirus prevents its from executing and more importantly if your convinced that it isn't a virus.

Hope this has helped all the hapless people out there trying to get this to work. As always do drop me a comment if you found this useful, if your feeling generous you could donate a dollar via paypal :)

14 comments:

  1. This doesn't work for me either. I'm using WinXP SP2. Admittedly it's running in VMWare, would this cause a problem?

    I've also tried the other pack you mention. That lets me log on multiple times, but only if using a different user to one already logged on.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm, the VMWare could possible cause a problem. Have not tried on a Virtualized environment so don't know.

    Ideally it should work with the same user. I have tried accessing the one host machine from various other machines XP SP1 , Win 98 even, works smoothly.

    If you have landed up here, its quite possible you would have tried out a lot of other solutions. While installing / uninstalling them just make that the number of concurrent usernames has not be limited to one. Other possible problem if you belong to a domain, the solution works on workgroup machines.

    I know I haven't been too helpful, hope you get it sorted out ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. The white on black gives me a headache.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Vikram. You're right, I've tried a LOT of solutions. However I used a copy of a VM with freshly installed XP.

    It's very odd, the only difference seems to be that the machine is virtual. If I get a chance I'll try it out with a real box and let you know.

    If anyone out there has had this working on a virtual solution, please post here and let me know.

    Cheers

    PS
    The only way I can get multiple sessions to work at present is by using the WinConnect ServerXP software.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This did not seem to work for me. I installed the second patch, TermSrvNoRestrPatch-1-3_PreDbgFix1.zip, after I tried the first one and it did not appear to work.

    After the second patch was applied I could not connect. Apparently the Firewall was not allowing RemoteDesktop sessions even though this was already checked off on the Computer Properties Remote tab. After allowing RDP connections, I was able to connect but only with the standard XP behaviour....it disconnected the previously logged on user.

    Any ideas or suggestions?

    Thanks,
    JR

    ReplyDelete
  6. Are you on SP2 or SP3, Like I have mentioned before , typical problem could occur with when some other methods have screwed up the registry settings, would recommend you trying on a clean machine to see if it works for you, if so would make sense to see if possible to clean / revert your registry ... Hope that helps ...

    ReplyDelete
  7. nothing worked for me except this link

    http://ice-club.com.ua/antiwpa/Other/TermSrvNoRestrPatch-1-3/


    easy worked 1st time

    ReplyDelete
  8. Is there a patch for Windows Server 2003?

    ReplyDelete
  9. whats Up with WIn XP SP3? Is the Patch working there also?

    Its really important to know.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @anonymous

    Yes it works with XP SP3.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Its so highly informative things are posted in your blog. I was seeking for this type of Desktop related Conference blog that have a fresh and interesting content.
    Web Conference

    ReplyDelete
  12. Do you find any advantages to using the Windows offering instead of third party remote desktop software? I think the necessary tweaking and lack of features native to the Windows option would immediately make external software the logical choice.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Well, you'd think so except for the fact that the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is AFAIK only available from Microsoft on Windows. You can have clients on any OS connect to a Windows machine running the service, but I have yet to see an alternative to the builtin service. If you look on Wikipedia, there seems to be a program that supports RDP clients connecting to a Linux machine! Just no product that works as a direct replacement for Terminal Services/Remote Desktop. The issue is that RDP supports very good speeds and compression compared to most protocols. Otherwise, it would make more sense to use VNC.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete