Could any of the resident IT wizards help me out with advice on a broken RDP connection? Basically can’t connect my laptop to work from my house – but can remotely connect it on other networks like the pub next door. So the problem seems unequivocally to lie with my home connection, which is just a vanilla Virgin home internet, and used to work fine.

Any ideas on settings to look at that I might have accidentally changed to stop it working?

I would check that you have the correct ports open on your router/firewall to allow RDP connections in.

Personally I would want to VPN in to the network and then establish an RDP connection instead of just opening up RDP ports though.

I’d be asking your work IT department, just to be sure!

 a broken RDP connection?

Basically can’t connect my laptop to work from my house

How are you connecting?  Connecting your laptop to work with RDP – so running mstsc or something back to a server at work?  I’m assuming work isn’t trying to RDP into your laptop, or is it? 😐

Does RDP rely on different subnets at either end of the connection?  Could it be that your network ranges have changed, either at home (new router?) or at work so that you now have a clash?  Connecting from the public WiFi next door means you avoid the clash?

How are you connecting?

Beat me to it.  Can you describe what and where you’re RDPing from and to?

It sounds like you’re RDPing to a work machine over the public Internet, in which case your IT department needs to think of a number between P44 and P46.

Not sure I understand.

You need to RDP to work systems from various remote locations. To do this you use a laptop.

Previously you could do this from your home wifi but no longer.

However you can still do this from other networks such as the pub wifi?

Most home broadband connections don’t limit outbound connectivity so you can usually connect to anything – connections the other way (into your network) are often protected by a firewall on the home wifi router but that shouldn’t be an issue here.

Can you connect to other RDP sites from your own network? Try connecting to 109.168.97.222. It’ll prompt for credentials (just type garbage in) but the point is you’ll see things happening rather than it just hanging/pausing/timing out.

It may be the firewall at your work that has some bizarre config blocking your ISP or home address but unlikely. However like someone else says opening RDP up to the whole internet is asking for trouble.

Woody for the win I reckon.

Thks – I’m just using the windows RDP facility.

Work IT did say it would not work from a public network – I guess I don’t understand the real differences between public and private networks as right now I can use the alehouse wifi to remote in no problem.

Again – what are you connecting to?  A remote server at work?  Do you use a VPN?

Woody for the win I reckon.

I dunno.  If it’s over a VPN then yes – you’ll likely be connecting to a local IP which could conflict (though work would be mad to have an RDP server in the 192.168 subnet for exactly this reason).  If it’s not then aside from being a potentially monumental security risk it’ll be a public IP so a non-issue.

Knowing the IP address you’re connecting to would be helpful, but you probably don’t want to post that in a public forum.  PM me if you want.

Dear God tell the IT department you can RDP to your machine from the pub, they’ve done something very very wrong 😀

Dear God tell the IT department you can RDP to your machine from the pub, they’ve done something very very wrong

I’d totally agree, with the caveat that it might be an airgapped and non-critical server so could be relatively ok.  I doubt it though…!

Again – what are you connecting to? A remote server at work? Do you use a VPN?

I’m trying to connect to my desktop PC at work.

I used to use a VPN facility for the work library, but it was replaced by some sort of browser add-on that verifies my credentials – not sure if that is still a VPN but it works from home in any case.

Right.

Does the IP address of your desktop start with 192?  Could you post the full address if so please?  (Don’t if it isn’t, PM me!)

It sounds like you’re RDPing to a work machine over the public Internet, in which case your IT department needs to think of a number between P44 and P46.

Thanks for that, that’s the clean desk policy out of the window

Thks Cougar but on return from some hard graft in the alehouse my RDP is now working on my home network. This is unfathomable to me as it’s been completely dead (and annoying me) for weeks, but it seems the act of asking about it on stw has resolved matters (at least right now it is working fine).

Thks all for the advice and apologies for the very non-interesting resolution.

It’s my aura. (-: If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard, “well, it wasn’t working a minute ago…” I could probably retire.

Thanks for that, that’s the clean desk policy out of the window

😆