Thursday 26 August 2010

Problems connecting to Remote Desktop over a VPN

Troubleshooting issues with Remote Desktop connections

By Strictly-Software

I have just experienced and finally resolved a problem that started suddenly last week that prevented me from connecting to my work PC from my laptop at home using Terminal Services / Remote Desktop.

The problem started suddenly and it has made little sense for the last week. The symptoms were:
  • A virgin media broadband Internet connection.
  • A windows XP laptop connected to my broadband over a wireless connection.
  • My laptop could access the VPN without any problem and it could also access the PC in question over a windows share e.g \\mycomputer\c$
  • Trying to connect using a Remote Desktop connection returned a "this computer cannot connect to the remote computer" error message.

As far as I was aware nothing had changed on my computer and I first though that maybe a virus was blocking the port or a windows update had caused a problem. However when I brought the laptop into my office and tried connecting to my PC over the office wireless connection there was no problem.

I then tried this great little tool RD Enable XP that allows you to set up remote desktop access remotely as long as you have access to the computer and the necessary admin privileges. It requires that you have PSExec installed which comes with the PSTools admin suite and allows you to carry out tasks on computers remotely such as monitoring and managing processes.

The program checks that you can access the remote PC, that the Terminal Services options are enabled correctly in the registry and that you're not being blocked by a firewall.

I had already checked that the fDenyTSConnections registry option was set correctly so when the application hung whilst trying to set firewall exceptions I thought that there was a problem with my router and firewall.

I then tried changing the port number that Terminal Service connections are carried out with from 3389 to 3390. This is another registry setting that needs to be changed on the remote computer and then after a reboot you just append the port number after the computer name or IP address when connecting e.g strmycomputer:3390.

This didn't work so I was pretty annoyed as Virgin media hadn't been much help so I was about to give up until I came across a message thread related to the same problem.

One of the suggestions was to change the Advanced Network Error Search option which is something Virgin offers it's users and is described as follows:

Our advanced network error search helps you find the website you're looking for quickly.

We all make mistakes when we type in website addresses. Perhaps we miss a few letters, or the website doesn't exist any longer. If an address you enter doesn't locate a site, this handy feature will convert the incorrect address into a web search, so instead of an error message you will get a list of our closest matches, plus some additional related links.
This option is linked to your broadband connection which explains why the problem was related to the local connection and not the PC or remote network.

Low and behold when I disabled this option I could once again access my work PC over Remote Desktop again!

I have no idea why this option was suddenly enabled as I have never come across or even heard of it before tonight so I can only imagine Virgin decided to update their settings without asking their customers first.

It also seems to be pre-selected on newly bought laptops as I found out again tonight! Lucky I wrote this blog article otherwise I would have had to hunt down the original again!

I have no idea why this Virgin config option affects remote desktop connections but it obviously can cause a total block on this type of functionality.

If you too have similar problems related to Remote Desktop connections and are also a Virgin Media customer then save yourself a whole lot of time and go to this page first and check your settings: https://my.virginmedia.com/advancederrorsearch/settings

10 comments:

remote pc access software said...

awesome article, very helpful and informative. best of luck for your future.

remote pc access software said...

awesome article, very helpful and informative. best of luck for your future.

us vpn said...

Congratulations, I hope you can now access via remote desktop.

Johnny Hanson said...

Fuck me, spent all night searching for a reason I couldn't access my PC even though OpenVPN said it was connected to my works server and was getting back an 81.200 IP address that resolved to virgin.
Thank god I found this article before I went mad.
Your amazing!

Amit Misra said...

Instead of connecting to computers remotely via VPN, I would rcommend use of remote support tools like logmein, R-HUB remote support servers etc. They work well.

Amit Misra said...

Instead of connecting to computers remotely via VPN, I would rcommend use of remote support tools like logmein, R-HUB remote support servers etc. They work well.

Unknown said...

Do you know that you have no privacy when you go online? It doesn't matter what anti-virus you have, whether free or paid, or if you have your firewall protection on, the data you send when you are using the internet can be accessed by third party individuals. What you need to have is the protection of a virtual private network or VPN. howtogetamericannetflix.pro

Nordvpn.com said...

IF you are wondering that you are safe when browsing from your home then you are wrong. Recently big cyber attack took placed in 120+ countries and which will definitely increase the VPN demands.

Unknown said...

I am a big believer in commenting on blogs to inform the blog writers know that they’ve added something worthwhile to the world wide web!..
the best carding forum

Robert said...


I can’t imagine focusing long enough to research; much less write this kind of article. You’ve outdone yourself with this material. This is great content.
vpn