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Contents 1 Remote Desktop Connection General Use Guide 1.1 Starting Remote Desktop 1.2 Enabling local resources 1.3 To improve the performance of connections 1.4 To save your connection settings to a file

Remote Desktop Connection General Use Guide

Remote Desktop is a powerful tool allowing a user to run their work machine remotely. This enables the user to run all their work applications while at home. If the user has Windows XP at home the client software is already installed if not it must be installed from the Microsoft WEB site. (www.microsoft.com and search for remote desktop client).The user’s work machine must have the user’s id enabled for Remote Desktop. SAS will do this upon request. It only takes a minute to add a user to the access list, but must be done on the users work machine.

There are several things that can be done to optimize using Remote Desktop. Several of these options will be covered here, others can be accessed from the Remote Desktop help bar. If an option does not work just unset it.

Starting Remote Desktop

1. Open Remote Desktop Connection by clicking Start, then point to Programs or All Programs, point to Accessories, point to Communications, and then click Remote Desktop Connection.
   • Provide information for automatic logon.
2. In the Remote Desktop Connection window, click Options(see images below).

   

   

   Figure 1

3. On the General tab(see images below), under Logon settings, in the User name box, verify that your user name is correct.

   

   

   Figure 1

4. In the Computer box insert your full computer name. i.e. “papa.admin.mtu.edu”
5. In the Domain box, type “admin.mtu.edu”.
6. Optionally, check the Save my password box, and then enter your password in the Password box.

   You might be prompted to supply your password upon connection, even if you have saved the password you typed in the Remote Desktop Connection dialog box. This is because of network security.

7. If you have the newest RDP client, you may see the following window. Enter your username in the form "ADMIN\<your user id>" and input your domain password.

   

   

   Figure 1

Enabling local resources

1. On the Local Resources tab(see image above).
2. Choose options you would like to use.

   These are various resources that you can choose to make available to your remote computer, or allow you to use resources on your home computer. The keyboard setting can be left as the default(in full screen mode only).
   

   • Remote computer sound: allows sounds from your remote computer to be played through your home computer. Not suggested for slow connections such as 56K dialup.
     
   • Local devices: allows you to use your hard drives, printer, or serial ports(not frequently used) on the remote computer.

To improve the performance of connections

1. In the Performance box, choose the speed of your connection.

   The default connection speed is Modem (56 Kbps). This speed offers very good performance for most networks. Use the faster speed settings to enable richer graphical features, such as desktop wallpaper or menu sliding and fading. To select a combination of individual effects, use the Custom setting. Remember the more options you are using the slower the Remote Desktop connection will run. Selecting the LAN option automatically turns all features on, you may want to click some off if performance is poor. Selecting LAN clicking an option off will change the setting to Custom automatically.
   
   

   Depending on the speed of your connection, you can specify the following characteristics:

   • Desktop background (not really needed)
   • Show window contents while dragging (not really needed)
   • Menu fading and sliding (not really needed)
   • Themes (not really needed)
   • Bitmap caching

To save your connection settings to a file

1. Click Options(see images above).
2. On the General tab(see images above), click Save As.
3. Enter a file name for the saved connection file, and then click Save.

   Connections are saved as Remote Desktop file (.rdp) files. An .rdp file contains all of the information for a connection to a terminal server, including the Options settings that were configured when the file was saved. You can customize any number of .rdp files, including files for connecting to the same server with different settings. To edit an .rdp file and change the connections settings it contains, right-click the file and then click Edit.