(This is a rather technical post so feel free to skip this if the title means nothing to you)
I had a dilemma last night. I was linked to this great article by someone in ArsTechnica’s #linux on setting up SeamlessRDP to my VMWare Windows XP installation to achieve an effect similar to VMware Fusion’s Unity on Mac OS X. The problem is that I soon found out that Remote Desktop is disabled in XP Home Edition, only to be enabled in XP Professional.
It took a lot of digging around but I was eventually able to figure out how to get this enabled. So here is my guide on how to enable Remote Desktop in Windows XP Home Edition. Just a heads up that this was important to me because of RDP’s ability to launch specific applications for seamless integration into my Linux desktop, if you don’t need this and just want a full desktop window, one of the free VNC solutions might be better for you (TightVNC seems popular).
The first thing is to trick the installation into thinking that it’s actually XP Pro. I found this information here. Before doing this it might be best to make sure your install is already set up with Service Pack 2, etc.
- Navigate the Windows registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions (where ControlSet00X is the one with the highest number) and delete the “ProductSuite” key.
- Create a new DWORD key in this same folder called “Brand” and set it’s value to 0.
- Reboot Windows. At startup mash F8 to bring up the boot options and choose “Last Known Good Configuration”.
After some hard disk churning you will be back to your welcome screen or desktop. You can then go to the System control panel and see that you now have a Professional Edition setup. This is great so far but unfortunately doesn’t actually install all those professional features.
Now I needed to get Remote Desktop to accept incoming connections.
I found this batch file on a forum post. It’s easy to follow; it basically creates a .reg file with the required keys, merges it, and does a reinstall of terminal services. After a reboot you should now see Terminal Services alive and well in the Services Administrative Tool. A “netstat -a” in the Command Prompt should show port 3389 as listening. At this point I was able to connect to my server but was getting disconnected immediately. After some more digging I found a replacement termsrv.dll that was actually from a Service Pack 2 beta but did the trick for me. Follow the instructions there or here (it must be replaced in safe mode). You might be interested in the registry edits mentioned in those posts as well for concurrent users.
I don’t know how much of this was necessary but after all this tinkering last night I am now able to Remote Desktop with success to my XP Home installation. Yay! One more thing… make sure you have a password associated with your Windows user!
ref:
http://www.geekport.com/2007/08/15/enabling-remote-desktop-in-xp-home/
October 20, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Hey Earl
I was hoping you would be able to help me. I was able to get the first part in getting home recognized as pro but the second half I need a little more help on. Would you be able to send me that batch file you gave a link to get get Terminal Services back running and then the other termsrv.dll file that will allow me to connect.
Your links aren’t working anymore and that post is gone. Please email me at itech.bogedin@gmail.com
Thanks
Brad
October 23, 2008 at 11:06 pm
hi brad,
thanks for the visit and comment, what link would that be?
if i may not have the rest of the article because i havent gone through all of this due to that xp home has lack of functionalities than the pro
thanks
October 24, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I need the link for the batch file to get the term services restarted and working. and then the updated .dll file so it wont crash. The links for the batch file and others wont work says blank page.