This method is called Remote Desktop and It is a great tool if you need to access something on your own personal computer at home. Here are some images of how remote desktop really looks like:
What is Remote Desktop? “With Remote Desktop, you can connect to your work computer from home and access all of your programs, files, and network resources as though you were actually sitting in front of your computer at work” - Microsoft.com. If you looked at the screenshots above you will see to how it actually looks.
How does it work? - Well thats what we are going to be looking into in this tutorial. Remote Desktop has its ups and downs like most other things in life. For example, you cannot Remote Desktop your computer if your Operating system is Windows Xp Home Edition or Windows Vista Home/Basic but you can remote desktop other computers using this the remote desktop feature. Of course this cannot stop the Home Edition and Basic vista people from harness remote desktop because there are other software you can install on a XP Home edition machine to enable remote administrator. One of the programs for this function that I have used in my experience is called Radmin, it is not freeware but you can try a demo at www.radmin.com.
To be start off using remote administration for your computer, first you need to make your PC available for remote desktop within your computer. To do this procedure please follow this tutorial:
- Click Start -> Right Click on My Computer
- Click on Properties -> Switch tab to Remote
- Check mark “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer”
This is how it should look like:
After that you have enabled Remote Desktop you can now access your computer from a different computer outside your local network. Also Windows XP Home Edition users you might notice that you do not have this option for your computers.
How Do I access my computer now? - This part of this procedure is the complicated part, as most of you would have to use a different way and some of you who use routers have to do some playing around with your ports.
If your using a router then this portion of this article is for you. Pretty much every router comes with what I call a Control Panel, its where you can make changes to your router setting for example allowing wireless network, or forwarding certain port. If you do have a router then I suggest you go to http://portforward.com/routers.htm and Enable TCP port 3389 for your computer, any port works but its best to stick to the ones given because it would interfere with other applications.
To Finally Remote Desktop - Ok we have covered most of the problems you could face before actually get into the remote desktop itself. The one thing I haven’t mentioned so far is Windows Firewall, the firewall is another that can prevent you from accessing Remote Desktop to your pc and to fix your windows firewall read the top portion of this article.
This is how to do remote desktop:
- Click Start -> All Programs
- Accessories -> Communications
- Click on Remote Desktop Communication
It would look like this:
Where it says Computer is where you would put the IP address to the computer you want to Remote Desktop, so probably your own computer’s IP address. You can also connect with the forwarded port in here. So for example If I wanted to connect to my computer I’d put something like Computer: 192.168.123.102 BUT this only works if I’m trying to remote desktop from a different computer that IS using the same internet as me, so for example if I was outside my house and tried to connect to my computer I would have to use my global IP address and use this information: Computer: 68.149.74.105 and this would connect to my computer. If I was using a router, you would have to declare the PORT to use for connection otherwise it wouldn’t work.
If your using a router and would like to connect put make sure you use this syntax for connecting, Computer: [Ip Address]:[Port] for example: Computer 68.149.74.105:3389 .
Once your connected you can use the computer you are connected to virtually and use it as if you were at home. The problem to this is Bandwidth!, this means depending on your internet connection it will determine the speed of how fast documents/files/browser and others will work. I know for certain that Videos and Video Games do not work on a Remote Desktop as the frames cannot be transfered as quickly. You can try to watch a video and experiment with it yourself. Hopefully this article covered most of the foundation of how to Remote Desktop and was useful to people 
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