Ever been at a friends house and wished you could easily get into your home computer? Or maybe you are at the office and need to print out a document that is on your home computer at your work printer. Or maybe you just want to know how it works. Well there are many ways to control your computer but today we are going to show you how to use the built-in Remote Desktop (RDC) feature of Windows to our advantage.

Remote Desktop, included with the Professional and above versions of Windows, enables you to connect to your computer across the Internet from virtually any computer, Pocket PC, or Smartphone. Once connected, Remote Desktop gives you mouse and keyboard control over your computer while showing you everything that’s happening on the screen. With Remote Desktop, you can leave your computer at the office without losing access to your files, applications, and e-mail.

Pictures are from my Picasa Albulm

OK, lets get started.

First off, lets enable Remote Desktop on your computer. Right click “My Computer” and click properties.

Now let’s check the box to “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer”. Click on Select Remote Users” to make sure your name is included, if not add it if you want to connect using your name.

Ok now we will change the default listening port for Remote Desktop because it makes it more secure through obscurity. You can reference this Microsoft Article for more information.

Click Start and click Run (if in Vista or Win7 hold down Ctrl and press R) type in regedit and click ok.

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

On the Edit menu, click Modify, and then click Decimal.

Note: To avoid conflict with other programs it is suggested to select a port between 49152 and 65535.

Type the new port number, and then click OK

Now let’s go to http://no-ip.com and create an account. (Why? because you don’t want to ahve to remember your ever changing piblic ip address so we will create a dynamic dns name instead, don’t worry it’s very easy)

Continue creating your account:

Click on Windows

And let’s download and install the Update Client.

Once logged in, let’s click on Hosts/Redirects.

And let’s create a new host:

You can specify your own name and select from many of the free domains (i made one using lucaspc.no-ip.info):

Now we see our newly created host and it is pointing to our public ip address now.

Now that our account is all setup we can test it by using remote desktop and simply connecting to ourselves. (it can be found in start–>programs–>accessories)

Now type in our host name we just created and remember to use the port that we changed also. should look like this: lucaspc.no-ip.info:1234

It should now connect if not lets check our firewall settings:

Click Start and then Run (if in Vista or Win7 hold down Ctrl and press R) type in firewall.cpl and click ok

We can see that it still has our old port number in the firewall rules, so let’s create a new one.

Now that the firewall on the computer is straight, we check the port forwarding on our router to make sure it is correct.

go to http://portforward.com and click on Router List

Find your router in that list and click on it’s name.

Don’t forget to skip their advertisement for their software.

Now it should work from any of your friends computer’s you visit and from your office if you need it to.