Figure 12-4 The Advanced tab of Remote Desktop Connection in .NET

Generation Code 39 Extended in .NET Figure 12-4 The Advanced tab of Remote Desktop Connection

You need to understand these three authentication options for the 70-622

To configure a Windows Vista computer to accept Remote Desktop connections from other computers, you need to enable the feature in the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box. To access this tab, first open the System Control Panel. (You can open the System Control Panel by first clicking System And Maintenance and then System in Control Panel. Alternatively, you can open the properties of Computer in the Start menu or even just enter the keystroke Windows + Pause/Break.) Then, in System Control Panel, click Remote Settings on the Tasks menu, as shown in Figure 12-5.

This procedure opens the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 12-6.

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By default, in the Remote Desktop area of the tab, the Don t Allow Connections To This Computer option button is selected. This setting disables or blocks incoming Remote Desktop connections. To allow incoming Remote Desktop connections from any version of the Remote Desktop Client, choose the second option (selected in Figure 12-6). This option is considered less secure because it allows incoming connections from older clients to be established before the remote user is authenticated. If instead you want the local computer to perform user authentication before an RDP connection is established (and thereby reduce susceptibility to denial-of-service attacks), choose the bottom option, Allow Connections Only From Computers Running Remote Desktop With Network Level Authentication. Be aware, however, that this option will block most incoming connections from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 computers. Also note that when you enable Remote Desktop in this tab by selecting the second or third option, you are automatically creating a local firewall exception for incoming Remote Desktop connections. You would need to create this firewall exception manually only if it were deleted. But even in that case, you could also just disable and then reenable Remote Desktop in the Remote tab to re-create the firewall exception. Exam Tip On the 70-622 exam, expect to see questions related to these settings. For example, if a Windows XP computer cannot connect to a Windows Vista computer through Remote Desktop but other Windows Vista computers can, you know that the third option is selected. To allow the Windows XP computer to connect, choose the second option. Also be aware that you need to be familiar with the term Network Level Authentication.

When you enable Remote Desktop in the System Properties dialog box, the only users who are able to connect to that computer through Remote Desktop are by default administrators on the local computer. To allow other users to connect through Remote Desktop, add them to the Remote Desktop Users group on the local machine. The easiest way to do this is to click the Select Users button in the Remote tab. This procedure opens the Remote Desktop Users dialog box, as shown in Figure 12-7. To add users to the Remote Desktop Users group, simply click Add, and then type in the names of the desired user accounts. (To specify a domain user, be sure to enter the name in the form domain\user name.)

Technically, a user doesn t really need to be a member of either the Administrators group or the Remote Desktop Users group to connect through Remote Desktop. The user account just needs to be assigned the Allow Log On Through Terminal Services user right. However, all members of both the Administrators and Remote Desktop Users groups are automatically assigned this right.

Aside from networking issues, only five problems can typically block a Remote Desktop connection. If a remote computer is Remote Desktop compatible, yet a local user cannot connect to it through Remote Desktop, be sure to verify that all five of these conditions are met: 1. Remote Desktop cannot be disabled on the remote computer. You can enable and disable Remote Desktop in the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box. 2. The authentication options defined in the Remote Desktop Connection client cannot prevent a connection to the Remote Desktop server type.