David Kitchen

I’m a terrible blogger, however that isn’t going to deter me from making random out of the blue posts… public note taking effectively :)

Today’s note is on how to configure and setup Remote Desktop Connection so that I can access my home PC (in London) when I’m on a business trip (in Redmond).

To complete this guide, you will need:
1) Web space with an ftp account to upload to.
2) A home Windows XP PC, firewall optional but recommended.
3) A remote Windows XP PC, such as your work laptop.

Step 1:

Configure your home PC to have a static IP address:
http://www.portforward.com/networking/static-xp.htm

Step 2:

Configure your firewall to permit TCP 3389 inbound, and then configure your home PC to enable Remote Desktop Connections:
http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.org/RemoteDesktop/RemoteDesktopSetupandTroubleshooting.html

Step 3:

Discover your home PC’s remote IP address:
http://checkip.dyndns.org/

Step 4:

Install Wget:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/hherold/

You’ll want to add the directory that you place wget.exe in to your PATH environment variable so that you can call wget from anywhere.

Step 5:

Create two batch files in the C:\ directory:
ip.bat:
cd C:\WINDOWS\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Startup
wget --output-document=ip.htm http://checkip.dyndns.org/
ftp -s:C:\ftp.scr

ftp.scr:
open ftp.yourwwwdomain.com
yourusername
yourpassword
cd public_html
put ip.htm
quit

FTP Scripts are roughly documented here btw:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=96269

Step 6:

Assign the ip.bat script to startup when Windows starts up (and before a user logs in):
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/gptext_assigncomputerstartupscripts.mspx

Remember that the Group Policy editor can be reached with Windows Key + R and gpedit.msc

That’s it :)

Now you simply have to visit www.yourdomainname.com/ip.htm to see the IP address that your computer booted up with, and then open your Remote Desktop client, enter that IP and login to your WinXp box remotely :)

I haven’t done the above of course, I’ve strayed a little. Notably I don’t like the idea of placing my public IP address in a public folder on the internet, so I put it into a subdirectory that is .htaccess protected. I’m fairly sure you could figure this out for yourself though, you should be aware of your web server technology enough to know how to password protect a directory, and chances are that you might have IIS6, so me writing a guide would be useless.

I hope that the above helps someone though, it’s not as if you couldn’t find out this stuff, it’s just nice to have it all in one place as a quick step by step guide.