Help Remoting into a Windows Box

[macDonalds]

Hey folks,

I can remote in... but I have to do it with an IP on my local network. I would much rather type in "crappy windows box" and be able to gain access.

I'm using the latest Remote Desktop Connection Beta from Microsoft. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mkrishnan]

Is the server (the Windows computer) in the DMZ of the router or have you forwarded the appropriate ports to the windows computer? Have you opened those ports on the Windows computer's firewall?

You need to forward two ports to your Windows XP Professional-based computer: TCP port 3389, which Remote Desktop requires, and the port you specified in the TCP Port field in Internet Information Services (or TCP port 80 if you did not change the default).

Set Up Remote Desktop Web Connection with Windows XP

 

[MacDeac]

Hey folks,

I can remote in... but I have to do it with an IP on my local network. I would much rather type in "crappy windows box" and be able to gain access.

I'm using the latest Remote Desktop Connection Beta from Microsoft. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

You can usually do that with the name of the computer. That can be be found in the system icon in the control panel. (At least in XP. I haven't used Vista enough to know if it is in the same location.) I am also assuming you are connecting to a computer from another computer inside the lan. If not, you could use something like dnsalias.com to assign a name to the IP address.

 

[macDonalds]

Sorry guys, I didn't explain my problem well.

I can connect to my windows box on my lan via RDC. My problem is that I have to specify the ip address for the box and can't use the name of the computer. I would like to use the name of the computer.

Anyone know how I can accomplish this?

 

[mkrishnan]

Ahhh, you mean how do you refer to the computer by a text name within the intranet? Mmmm, I'm not sure about that one. Have you tried the name it's identified by in the local workgroup, using dashes to replace spaces, and adding a .local on the end? That's the way OS X works.

 

[macDonalds]

Ahhh, you mean how do you refer to the computer by a text name within the intranet? Mmmm, I'm not sure about that one. Have you tried the name it's identified by in the local workgroup, using dashes to replace spaces, and adding a .local on the end? That's the way OS X works.

Tried several combinations but no luck... hmmm.

ex:
workgroup-computername.local
computername.local
workgroup-computername

 

[mkrishnan]

Yeah, hmmm, I've never done that before. Hopefully if it's easily possible, someone else has and can provide directions? Sorry!

 

[BlackMax]

Normally this would be handled by DNS, but since you probably do not have DNS setup on your Intranet, if you add a hostname/IP address entry for your windows box to your host file on your OSX machine this will accomplish exactly what you are trying to do.

If you need more assistance just let me know.

 

[macDonalds]

Normally this would be handled by DNS, but since you probably do not have DNS setup on your Intranet, if you add a hostname/IP address entry for your windows box to your host file on your OSX machine this will accomplish exactly what you are trying to do.

If you need more assistance just let me know.

I think I know what you're getting at and I feel I've done something similar in the past with linux/pc. But that means that when my pc gets assigned a different ip address it won't work.

If that's not the case, maybe you can go into details? Thanks.