Remotely enable remote desktop

by Jason Prahl | Jul 25, 2006 | Blog, Computer Tips, Microsoft Windows

You’ve got a PC out there running Windows XP or a 2003 Server. You want to do a remote desktop session to it and mess with a users computer. The “allow users to connect remotely to this computer” is not enabled. You don’t want to get up and go to the users computer. Open regedit, goto file/connect remote registry. Enter the name of the computer you want to enable the remote desktop on. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKLM\System\CCS\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnection

Change the value data to 0. Wait a minute or two and you should be able to connect to the remote computer.

Long pauses while using Hotsync with Outlook in Exchange mode

by Jason Prahl | Jul 22, 2006 | Blog, Computer Tips, Microsoft Windows

I recently exchanged my Motorola Razr for a Treo 650 with a data plan through Alltel. So far I really like it. There are a couple of things that annoy me about the Palm OS, but there are just as many things about the Pocket PC OS that annoy me too.

So, I setup the Palm Hotsync to sync my Outlook calendar, contacts and such with the Treo 650. After messing with installing applications and playing around a bit the sync began to take a really long time.

A normal sync only takes at most 30 seconds and the sync began to take as long as 4 to 5 minutes. After these sync’s I figured there would be some sort of error message or something but there wasn’t. The log didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. I began uninstalling applications even to the point of nuking the thing and starting over. This worked once, but the long pauses returned.

I messed with the Palm desktop software a bit and tried renaming my Hotsync user, this seemed to work and then the pauses returned and this time renaming the user didn’t work.

What on earth is going on? I have the latest firmware and the latest Palm Desktop. Finally a moment of brilliance hits me and I wonder if it has anything to do with Outlook itself. I open Outlook, which I have setup to connect to an exchange server through cached mode. In cached mode you don’t have to be connected to the exchange server to open outlook and see your current data, you just don’t have the most current data that’s on the exchange server.

Then I connected to my VPN and allowed Outlook to connect to the server and this time the Hotsync returned to normal. Close Outlook, disconnect from the VPN and try Hotsync…long pause returns.

So it looks like if you are syncing with Outlook setup to communicate directly with an exchange server (not through Pop3 or SMTP) and are using cached mode you need to have a live connection to the exchange server, which in my case is done using a VPN connection when I’m not in the office. Live and learn huh?