Enable Remote Desktop

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Remote Desktop is one of the greatest features added to the Windows operating system.  It enables you to perform remote administration of servers from your desk or fix one of your kids computers from the couch.  Of course it's only great if it is enabled on the computer you are trying to access.  If you find yourself unable to connect to a remote computer because Remote Desktop has not been enabled you can enable it remotely by flipping a bit in the registry using regedt32. 

Here's how:

  1. Use regedt32 to open the registry of the remote computer.
  2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
  3. Change fDenyTSConnections to 0x00 (0x01 disables).  If the key is not there create it.

To enable Remote Assitance set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fAllowToGetHelp to "1"

This is old news to most of us in IT.  I posted here because the information on the reg key is hard locate when you need it.  I was on-site at a customer yesterday and spent 30 minutes trying to locate this in the Microsoft Knowledgebase without finding it.