Enable remote desktop on a machine remotely

Many times i am trying to connect to another machine, but realize when I'm connecting that Remote Desktop is not enabled on the target computer.

How does one enable remote destktop on the target machine, remotley?

Solution 1:

Check this hack from O'Reilly posted back in 2004.

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

Basically, you just remote log into target computer's registry and change the settings there.

Hope it helps.

Solution 2:

IntelliAdmin has a free utility for this:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/06/remotely-enable-remote-desktop.html

EDIT - I cant remember if you need to open a firewall port or not to use this. If so, I use pstools to disable firewall on remote machines with the command prompt. Then run the tool. Then enable the firewall.

The psexec command to disable/enable firewall is: netsh firewall set opmode mode = disable