How To Enable Remote Desktop Connection In Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
Posted May 4, 2010 – 5:27 pm in: Windows 7 GuidesEarlier this week, we showed how to enable remote desktop connection in Windows 7. As we have mentioned in the post, one can’t use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to a computer running Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic and Home Premium editions.
Since most of Window 7 users are running Home Premium edition, many users are surely missing this feature. Worry not! Here is how to enable remote desktop connection feature in Windows 7 Home Premium edition:
1. Download and extract the ZIP file to obtain all the necessary files required to enable & use the feature.
2. Right-click on Install file and select Run as administrator. Click “Yes” for the UAC prompt.
3. The script will be opened in a command window. Press any key to continue.
4. Type “Y” and hit enter for “Do you wish to enable multiple sessions per user” question.
5. Again, type “Y” and hit enter for “Do you wish to enable blank password logon?” question.
6. You should see the done message in the next screen. Finally, press any key to complete the procedure.
Please create a system restore point before using this trick to be on the safer side.
Thanks to untermensch for creating this script.
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68 Comments
There is also a need to enable the RDP port through the Windows 7 Firewall. At least in my case.
I’ve seen this trick done on previous versions of Windows. It was primarily used to allow multiple sessions (as the images indicate above) over RDP to the same machine simultaneous. This is an interesting take that I wouldn’t of thought of.
Works perfectly, but I also needed to add the 3389 port in the Windows Firewall.
Thanks a lot!
Wonderfull piece of code.
Like the others people here said : need to open port 3389 manually.
And be carrefull, administrators’ group in the cmd is “Administrateurs” in French ;o)
I can’t get it to work in windows 7 starter. Is any way to get it to work in starter?
And “Administraattorit” in finnish. But we are no that proud of our country that we would demand using finnish in every place.
In the matter of fact most finish IT folks think that using our own language should be prohibited in everything related to computers.
English is much better and “official” de facto language.
Its working Fine !!
Thank You very much !!
Hi..
Is it not possible to connect to another PC which is also running Win 7 home premium and is on the same network ? I have installed this thing on both machines.
After these steps, then what?? I want to connect to the Home Premium computer from an Ultimate computer. What do I do after these steps to enable the connection?
Sweet patch, I always had this problems but now its resolved.
Thanks,
Tried this on W7 Home Premium. Script reports that C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll was not found, so I copied it from a W7pro machine. Debug log said patching was successful. After rebooting the W7hp machine, termsrv.dll was again not found.
OK, I got this working. Nice work on the script to all who contributed – I learned some things by studying it. First of all – be sure to maintain the directory structure when you extract the ZIP file. Strange things happen otherwise.
For my W7hp system, termsrv.dll was not present and I had to copy it from another machine. Also the line “ECHO %VERSION% | FIND /I “Windows 7 Home Premium” >>%DEBUGLOG%” in the :HOMEPREMIUM section doesn’t work. At least on my system, there is no environmental variable %VERSION%. I’ve seen some posts that mention a variable %VERS%, but I didn’t have that one either. I just copied that section to a new CMD file and ran it, and that opened the firewall.
One more update. The environment variable %VERSION% is supposed to be set earlier in the script, in the section
RODUCTVERCHK. However, the preceding statement GOTO STARTDIALOG skips around it, so %VERSION% never gets set, and later, the firewall commands necessary for :HOMEPREMIUM are never executed.
Got RDC working on my new HTPC thanks to this article and the additional info in the comments (opening port 3389). Thanks!!
** RDP username and password incorrect problem, and (sort of!) fix **
Thank you for posting this “tweak”. It was very useful and I now have RDP access to my Windows 7 Home Premium desktop over a PPTP VPN connection with a Draytek 2820 router.
In order to help others, I would like to share the following experience:
I initially set up my windows 7 host so that I could log on as user “homeuser” with a null password – this was an administrator account. This worked well using RDP client v6 on Windows Vista and using iRdesktop on my iphone.
I was using the iPhone client quite often, but rarely the vista client. In the meanwhile, I changed the name of my windows user account from “homeuser” to “myusername”. On the iPhone, I simply inputted the new username – it worked fine when I tried the account both with and without a password. Sometime later, I tried to log on with the built in vista RDP client. I could get to the host log on screen, but the new username and password (which work on the host machine, and the iPhone client) produced a “username and password incorrect” error message. It drove me nuts, and I had forgotten that I had changed the username. I upgraded the vista RDP client to v7, and tried the Microsoft Mac RDP client v2, but to no avail.
Microsoft seem to be aware of this issue…
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2004240
…but it seems that they haven’t released a proper patch.
Then, the penny dropped. I tried the orginal username, “homeuser”, on both the mac and vista clients and it worked! Despite this, I need to use the new username, “myusername”, on my iPhone RDP client and, of course, the host machine. Very frustrating, but I’m glad that I got to the bottom of it. I didn’t find many good descriptions of this problem online, hence why I have put it here.
Wow..Worked perfectly the first time, on a brand new HP
this only worked half way for me i still had to access the registry editor to enable user authentication from my admin and now all i can access is my admin account using this
Well, thanks for this great patch! works fine for me!
i just notice that sometimes my remote doesnt works,
and after i came back home – im running again this script and it make the remote enabled again.
should i need to run this script every time after restart, maybe? i also did a CHKDSK before some days..maybe its the CHKDSK that “fix” a problem and disabled this patch??
there is a way to make the computer run this script on windows startup – so every time my computer is starting up – i can be sure the patch is alright and i can connect from anther computer (its really annoying when im out-side my home and i cant connect and i need just to run this script again)
thanks again, man!
it is working fine, but it not asking me forpassword any more when I log on RDP. is there a way to use this patch and still be abale to have password protection?
Just to summarize this so I can get it working on my
W7-HP desktop
1. Download and install using instructions above
2. Go into firewall setting and add port
3. what about on the router ? do I need to enable port
4. after this I “should” be able to RDP from a W7HP to anote W7HP on the same network ?
THX
Awesome, script worked 1st try. Win 7 home premium 64bit, connecting with XP home on a netbook.
If you get an error when try to Patch the file.
1. Go to windows/system32
2. Click on termsrv.dll / Property
3. Set right for all your users to max.
4. Star the install and it will work.
5. Dont forget to restore termsrv.dll.
I have a Swedish version so dont know the exact terms for you.
Can you remote to host computer (win 7 home prem0 as a standard user? I cannot access the local security policy to make the standard user a remote user. Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot dear, it’s working………….
This patch works great. But I have no remote printer ports (ts001 …). Can anyone help me?
Thank you
I ran the script and it worked as expected. However the RDP doesn’t work. I looked at the debug after installing and got this:
SUCCESS: The file (or folder): “C:\windows\System32\termsrv.dll” now owned by the administrators group.
processed file: C:\windows\System32\termsrv.dll
Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files
0F05EC2887BFE197AD82A13287D2F404
C:\termsrv.bak
C:\termsrv.dll
2 file(s) moved.
The operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.
No rules match the specified criteria.
I’m assuming it worked fine on install. What else should I do. I open port 3389 on my firewall also.
Fantastic hack!! Save a fortune!
Worked great, I’ve installed this on four machines that have Win 7 Home Premium. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get through the router, but now I can access any computer from my home. I had to set up port 3389 in firewall settings. Then enable remote access in the router and set up port forwarding. Now to change from one machine to another, I access the router and change the port forwarding address to the other machine, then reconnect. Thank you. :0)
Blank password = Y? so anyone can get on my machine?
I tried the recommended steps for enabling RDP in my W7 home premium. It works only to a point where I get the login prompt. That indicates, perhaps, that I dont have any issues with the router or firewall settings.
However, I am unable to get past that. It simply refuses to accept the login credentials. If I use a administrator account, it does not accept password. If I use another username, it says – they are not authorized to use RDP.
Has anyone faced this? Any help?
Thank you
How can I tested or find out locally that is working ?
Sweet ! Working first time.
awesome..Thank you
I downloaded and extracted but right-click does not give the option to Run As Administrator. I have HP Win7 Home Premium. The account I use is already an Administrator. When I run the script it says you must run as an admin.
Any ideas, anyone?
Nevermind, just figured it out. Needed to really extract it and not just the auto-extract.
Thanks, this works great! I love the multiple user logon feature.
new to this sort of thing. I have extracted the patch and run it and everything works perfectly. no issues. I can log in to my remote desktop fine and see basically my screen. However I do not have access to my task bar. also I tried to open media center from the remote computer to see if I could watch something remotely and it wouldn’t work. media center wouldn’t even open. Is this a limitaion of remote desktop or am i missing something?
does anyone know how to extract it because i have no way!
Argh! Damn SP1. Looks like SP1 has cleared it off again. Anyone have a fix?
Yep… seems like it’s broken after the SP1
I recently installed Windows 7 SP1 and it broke this patch for me. I tried re-patching, but was unsuccessful. However, I was able to manually patch the termserv.dll file myself using a hex editor (HxD is a good one) and then followed the instructions in the .nfo file supplied with the download. I copied C:\Windows\System32\termserv.dll to my desktop, opened it in HxD and followed the find/replace instructions in the .nfo file. There are three hex strings to find and replace, but I only found the second and third strings. I replaced them with the specified values, saved, rebooted into safe mode and overwrote the original termserv.dll (i created a backup first as well). Everything seems to be working again.
Hope this helps.
I can confirm the post from “SP1 Workaround”. As for the first string, I searched only for the first 5 or 6 bytes, confirmed that that was the only occurence in the file and then replaced the entire string (11 bytes if I remember correctly). RDC works again
I had the same problem after SP1 and just checked my termserv.dll. It already has the changes in the .nfo file. I can connect and got to login, but after entering my password it disconnects. Any ideas on how to fix or troubleshoot this?
Can anyone post the SP1 patched file here?
untermensch keeps an updated version of the patcher here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/79427.aspx
It works with SP1 too!
Just follow the directions posted above for SP1 Workaround, it worked for me on x64 Home Premium SP1. I didn’t need to boot into safe mode though.
I took ownership of termsrv.dll, copied it to my desktop, made the modifications listed in the nfo file for x64 (only second and third strings need to be replaced, the first string is not found in termsrv.dll).
Renamed the existing termsrv.dll in the system32 directory, then copy/pasted my modded file into system32. Rebooted for good measure, and was able to RDP into the machine no problem.
Here is the SP1 file I did myself as described above and it worked for me. This is for 64-bit system just copy to C:/windwows/System 32 folder (backup old one first)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PZDHGL56
this worked great for Windows 7 Home Premium… thanks a ton, made my life a lot easier! Had to enable 3389 as others have explained. Windows Firewall with Advanced Settings -> Inbound Rules -> New Rule -> Rule Type: Port -> number 3389, with any name – keep clicking Next till it finishes.
Not working anymore..
After the update SP1 windows 7 the RDP not working.
Maybe somenbody can help, of have any suggestions?
I installed SP1, and RDP stopped working, so I have edited the .dll file as described above and it now works except that if I login remotely then the user logged in on the remote machine is logged out. How can I get the system to allow multiple logins on the remote machine, as it did before SP1?
I have a weird question…. After I installed this successfully, I was trying to remote into my Win7 home premium machine from another XP machine but was not able to. So, I looked into windows services to see if I need to start any of the newly installed service. I came across a service called “Remote Desktop Services”. Not sure if this was existing before I ran the script… Anyways I stopped the service and looked at the properties. When I changed some logon settings, it appears that this service is not starting at all. I tried to reinstall the above script but it failed this time….
How do I uninstall the above script and reinstall it again?
I have a new HP desktop and termsrv.dll as not found. I copied from Vista but get an unkown checksum exiting message. the script continues to run but shows the port not listening. The Termservice service shows failed “Failed to Rerad Description. Error Code 15100″. Do I need a different termsrvc.dll for Windows 7? Where can I get it?
Thanks for all your help.
Quick question: I am trying to get this going but I get this error message. Error: Unknown Checksum…exiting. The program found termsrv and I made sure I had all the permissions needed. Could you give me a hand?
Ok, did the install and this was the result:
Taking ownership of C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
Granting Administrators rights
Stopping Remote Desktop Services
Found C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
Analyzing…
Error: Unknown Checksum… Exiting
Starting Remote Desktop Services
Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
Service is not listening
Done
Press any key to continue . . .
I have allowed port 3389 thru firewall, but still not working. I am at a loss at this point. Anyone can help?
I got the same error as Daniel, Unknown Checksum…Exiting
Any advice?
Thanks for your help
After rereading the posts I found references to SP1. I just updated to SP1 recently. Could this be my problem?
Thanks again for any help.
Daniel,
I’m having the same problem. Did you install SP1 by any chance? I’m guessing this file changed hence the checksum failure.
Thanks for all the comments guys, I did the original fix and couldn’t log in, then read through the comments and found SP1 broke it, but SP1_Fix had been kind enough to post the link to the new patcher.
Just did a MS update and remote desktop no longer functions. Any ideas?
perfect! thx
If you have updated to SP1 this will no longer work
If your using 64-bit use this modified .dll instead just copy in into C:/windwows/System 32 but back-up the old one first just in case.
file here – http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PZDHGL56
WIN 7 SP1 USERS!!!! The patched .dll that dilbert posted works perfectly. Use it and you’ll be in good shape.
I did the install and here is the result.
Taking ownership of C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
Granting Administrators rights
Stopping Remote Desktop Services
Found C:\Windows\System32\termsrv.dll
Analyzing…
Error: Unknown Checksum… Exiting
Starting Remote Desktop Services
Pausing 5 seconds to give service time to start listening
Checking if Service is listening on port 3389
Service is not listening
Done
Press any key to continue . . .
Please help
Applied patch to two W7 both SP1 computers on my workgroup. B > A works! but A > B does not.
Ideas please?
thanks.
Look for a file called: rdpcorekmts.dll
I copied the version 6.1.7600.16385 after renaming the 6.1.7601.17514 version.
Try that.
SabreWulf
mb
Posted February 28, 2011 at 11:25 pm | Permalink
I had the same problem after SP1 and just checked my termserv.dll. It already has the changes in the .nfo file. I can connect and got to login, but after entering my password it disconnects. Any ideas on how to fix or troubleshoot this?
the file which needs to be downloaded and installed is not available anymore in media fire site. says it has been removed. Is there any other place I can find the file.
Any ideas why I do not see the drives on the local PC?
It didn’t bother me but suddenly copy/paste between the two computers stopped working.
The zip file supposed to b downloaded is not available any more. pls let me know from where else i can download the zip file.