Configuring Remote Desktop

You can make remote desktop connections only to computers running the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Other editions of Windows 7 do not support incoming Remote Desktop connections, but all editions include the Remote Desktop client software. Remote Desktop is not enabled by default on computers running Windows 7. You can enable it on the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box. When you enable Remote Desktop you need to choose whether to allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop or to restrict connections to computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication. Only clients running Windows Vista and Windows 7 support Network Level Authentication by default. It is possible to configure computers running Windows XP with SP3 to support Network Level Authentication, but this feature is not enabled by default. If you need to connect to a client running Windows 7 from a client running Windows XP client that does not have SP3 applied, it is necessary to configure the option that allows connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop.

When you enable Remote Desktop, Windows Firewall automatically updates rules to allow Remote Desktop connections to be made to the computer. If you reset Windows Firewall to its default settings, you need to re-enable the Remote Desktop firewall rules manually. You can also re-enable these rules by disabling and then re-enabling Remote Desktop.

If you want to allow a standard user to connect remotely using Remote Desktop, you must add her account to the local Remote Desktop Users group. Only members of the Administrators and Remote Desktop Users local groups are able to make connections to a client running Windows 7 using Remote Desktop. When you click the Select Users button on the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box, it opens the Remote Desktop Users dialog box. Any user you add using this dialog box is added automatically to the Remote Desktop Users group and this list displays all current members of that group, no matter what method was used to add the user accounts.