Can't Remote Desktop with MSTSC

[MitelInMyBlood]

OK experts looking to earn yourself a star, what have I done?

W7 Ultimate recent reinstall to replace the HDD. Since the reinstall I can no longer use MSTSC to open a remote desktop session to my work PC.

I can ping it, I can also ping the DNS name, I can also remote desktop to it from another machine, so I know the problem is here on my end. - Something I've done. When attempting to open a remote session it acts like it's going to connect but then times out and I eventually get an error message screen with 3 possible causes listed
[ul]
[li]Remote access to the server is not enabled[/li]
[li]The remote computer is turned off[/li]
[li]The remote computer is not available on the network[/li] [/ul]

Except none of these conditions are true, because as I said, I can remote desktop to it successfully from another PC.

Any ideas?
Thanks


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[linney]

Have you checked for Firewall problems on your Home machine?

 

[cdogg]

Just to clarify, when you say you can remote it from another machine, is that other machine also on the outside (not internal)? Have you tried it from another computer on your home network? Are you having problems using remote desktop to other computers on your home network (if that's even an option to test)?

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

I've even turned off (completely disabled) my firewall and disabled my A/V.

For clarity, yes, the "other machine" is right here alongside the one that suddenly can't get to the remote session with MSTSC. This is driving me nuts. WTF have I done to my Win7 desktop? It was working fine with the old hard drive, which by the way I still have. I'm about ready to pull the cover and try going back. The old HDD didn't fail, it got replaced with an SSD.


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[rclarke250]

When you set up the new version of windows 7 on the new hdd, did you rejoin the workgroup and or homegroup?

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Yes.

For clarity here, the HDD of the "working" system was cloned and laid-down on the new SSD. Subsequently some pruning took place to resize the swapfile and move it to another drive. With 8 gigs of memory it's unlikely you'd ever use the swapfile anyway, but still one was created on another drive. Also some libraries and temp directories were moved off the SSD

At this same time my AVAST subscription had expired so I (unwittingly) removed all the Avast structure and installed Microsoft's free A/V software. That was a disaster as it increased the boot time, nearly doubling it. After spending a bit over $400 for the speed of a 250-gig SSD the last thing I wanted was a sluggish application slowing the boot time to a crawl. I next removed this and bought & installed Avast 6. That restored the boot-up time (back to 44 seconds from a cold start).

I've also used Soluto to prune some things from the boot process, and as I write this I am undoing that and going to reboot and try again.

Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[strongm]

Can you check in W7's RDP settings on the Advanced tab whether it says "Connect and don't warn me" under Server Authentication

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

also,

if you want to enable RDP "remotely" over a network, you can still use this method:

http://oreilly.com/windows/archive/server-hacks-remote-desktop.html

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[strongm]

Sadly, the issue is not that RDP is disabled on the 'remote' box.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Thanks.
For Strongm, yes, we're set to connect & don't warn me.
Disabling Soluto and all it's various hooks (and of course rebooting) made no difference.

There's obviously something rotten in Denmark besides the cheese. If I get a chance later today I'll crack open the case & reconnect the original drive & give all this another try.



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[tlcscousin]

Are you behind a router?
Have you checkled to see if the IP address your getting is the same as before and if you have a router that the proper port is forwarded to that computer's IP address?

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

and perhaps the port forwarding is set to a dchp address that no longer exists on the network?

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[linney]

What was the name of the Firewall that you disabled and turned off? Except for the built-in Windows Firewall, third party Firewalls often have to be uninstalled (and later reinstalled) to thoroughly exclude them as the problem.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

SOLVED! Thank goodness.

Thanks all for your suggestions. However, the solution involved a (stupid) and ill-advised change I made to the DNS address in my WIN7 network configuration after installing the new SSD.

I was trying to RDP to my office desktop PC using its machine name (MXLO123XXV) a DNS name the "public" DNS server I had very recently changed to, knew nothing about. Duh....

My 2nd (laptop) pc at home of course went right straight to it without a problem, as of course did my newly reconfigured home desktop machine once I put the original drive back.

Now I knew for sure that the root cause was something that I changed in the course of replacing the "spinning iron" with the SSD.

Fortunately I kept some pencil notes when I made the numerous changes, although they were cryptic at best, just 1-line 'memory hooks'. And while not really what you might call "documented", over in the left hand margin of 1 page I had mindlessly scribbled some random numbers... 208.67.222.222 and suddenly the light came on.

Thanks again for all the many suggestions. Looks like we need to add DNS to that list.






Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[strongm]

Some of us thought DNS then saw "I can also ping the DNS name" in your OP and so moved on ...

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Indeed I could ping the DNS name. The first clue, which I totally missed, was the responding address was coincidentally a valid name on the public Internet and not the address of the target PC on the private network. The 2nd clue, also missed, was the 68ms response time of that packet which should have been only 30ms.

It probably would have helped to mention that my router is a Cisco 831 with split tunnelling to create a lan extension.

A number of clues staring me in the face were overlooked because I was looking for a W7 problem associated with a drive swap. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member