Windows XP - Remote Desktop problem

[William Brogden]

On two of my XP machines Remote Desktop starts just fine and shows an initial dialog.

On this HP media XP machine, the starting dialog does not appear, but I can find the mstsc.exe process in the windows Task Manager process list.

I tried to reinstall from a downloaded version but the installer says I already have it and stops.

Any suggestions?

Bill

[Peter Johnson]

I'm confused. Are you running Remote Desktop on your "HP media XP machine" attempting to connect to another machine, or are you on another machine and attempting to connect to the HP machine? And which one has mstsc.exe running? And what is the "starting dialog"? Or the "initial dialog"? And what did you try to reinstall? XP ? Remote Desktop?

I assume that you have configured the target machine (the one you want to connect to with Remote Desktop) to allow Remote Desktop access.

[William Brogden]

Yes, the remote desktop connection is intended to talk to a Windows Server 2003 which has been correctly configured. In fact I have been able to execute the connecting program (mstsc.exe) on a more recent XP system and communicate with that server.

The starting (initial) dialog is what you go through to define which machine to connect with, the resources to be made available, etc. when you first choose "Remote Desktop Connection" from the Accessories list.

On my Media XP machine this does not appear but mstsc.exe shows as a process so obviously it started but without a startup dialog I cant tell it what to do.

Bill

[Jaikiran Pai]

William Brogden wrote:
The starting (initial) dialog is what you go through to define which machine to connect with, the resources to be made available, etc. when you first choose "Remote Desktop Connection" from the Accessories list.

How about, from the command line:

mstsc /v:<IP address of remote system>

or (for an interactive session)

mstsc /v:<IP address of remote system> /console

[William Brogden]

AHA! The command line start with /v: and /console got me connected, thanks Jaikiran!

Now my problem is, how to get it to show the dialog which lets me assign resources such as a drive on this computer to show up as available in the remote session.

Various permutations on mstsc /help or /? didnt get me any list of available commands

Could this be a version problem?

Thanks again!

Bill

[Jaikiran Pai]

Now my problem is, how to get it to show the dialog which lets me assign resources such as a drive on this computer to show up as available in the remote session.

I personally haven't done that, so not sure where this is done from the UI (/dialog). Is it done in the "Local Resources" tab on the dialog?

Anyway, irrespective of how it's done from the UI, it's got a command line equivalent. For the command prompt, these configurations are specified through a config file. The mstsc accepts the config file as a parameter. The configurations equivalents to their UI counter parts are listed here. So going by what you mentioned, i think you are after the "redirectdrives:i" option. So the config file (blah.rdp) would look like:

full address:s:<IP address of server>
redirectdrives:i:1

and then the mstsc command would be:

mstsc blah.rdp /console

I haven't really played with the config files for mstsc (and don't have a Windows system right now, to try this), so not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for

[William Brogden]

Perfect! Those are indeed the options that "Local Resources" on the dialog would get me IF I could get the dialog to display.

I did lots of searches for Remote Desktop command options but they always led to only the command line options, not the full configuration file options. All the other advice started with selecting the Remote Desktop from the accessories list and then working with the dialog which appears -HA.

Thanks again
Bill