I am trying to do a remote desktop connection in my home workgroup between a desktop PC and a Vista laptop. The network is rather simple. The desktop is running XP Pro SP2 and is connected to a Linksys wireless router WRT150N by ethernet cable. It has been assigned an IP address of 192.168.1.100. The laptop, running VistaBusiness SP1,connects wirelessly (to the same router) and has an IP of 192.168.1.101. The router handles DHCP. Both laptop and desktop are on the same workgroup. I have made sure firewall on both laptop and desktop have remote desktop ticked in the exceptions. When I open Remote Desktop Connection and enter either the PC name or its IP address and always get "This computer can't connect to the remote computer" I can ping the machines both way and am starting to wonder if I missed something obvious or if I need to run a terminal server (a bit overkill on a home network, no?)

David, I use this all the time and have no issues at all, you will get a security warning from Vista connecting to an XP machine but just tell it ok. Is Remote desktop enabled on your desktop machine (right click my computer, remote tab, check enable remote desktop? Do you have a firewall blocking port 3389? Do you have at least 1 user setup on the XP machine with a password (remote desktop will not work without a password and the user must be granted remote access rights). Hope this helps, if not I will try to help you out more but will need a bit more info, Dave

Thanks Dave, I thought I had enabled Remote Desktop on my Vista Laptop... I had opened port 3389 (remote desktop) on both desktop and laptop but forgot to check I had remote desktop enabled on both machines. Thanks again Dave David