Microsoft Remote Desktop Mac Alternative Online
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- Originally Answered: What is the best free alternative to the Windows Remote Desktop utility for the Mac OS? Install team viewer on both the Mac and windows devices. It’s by far the best free option that runs as a service (which allows you to reboot windows remotely without losing ability to reconnect).
- If you are talking about alternatives to the RDP client itself then CoRD is one. Otherwise there are multiple remote access protocol different than RDP such as VNC, Teamviewer, Logmein, etc.
Remote desktop with VNC Introduction. VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a system to share a graphical desktop, pretty close to xrdp The difference is that you connect to the current session directly, unlike xrdp which created a new session There are a large number of VNC servers and clients (RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, ).
For those who don't know, the Microsoft Knowledgebase article #187623 shows how to change the port number on the Windows side of things.
The gist of it is to change the PortNumber key in the registry at:
We've also found that you can duplicate the RDC app (even when it is running!) and run several copies at the same time in order to connect to several machines at the same time.
Must you be using multiple target port numbers for this to work? I can't STAND the single RDC connection that i have to deal with right now, as I admin a few MS 200x servers, and find I need to hop between them often.
No, you can connect to more than one target machines, all of which use the standard port 3389. Or, you can create multiple connections to the same machine, all using port 3389.
I am a somewhat experienced Windows and Macintosh admin.I have never been able to get Remote Desktop Client to work.
The client on the Macintosh takes a very very long time, thinking about the connection, then gives up. The Windows XP Pro machine claims to be allowing Remote Desktop users, and the network connection claims to have a firewall rule set to allow connections on port 3389. I added a rule for port 3389 to my Macintosh firewall via the System Settings:Sharing Preference Pane. Still no luck.
What am I missing here?
I can ping both ways between machines, also SSH works between the Windows and Mac: they see each other's TCP network services. But no Remote Desktop!
Are you sure you've enabled (or ublocked the port in the firewall settings) Remote Desktop? If you are trying to connect to W2K Server then make sure Terminal services are installed as well.
HTH
CJ
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To mess up an OS X box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Mac Os X
I was having a similar problem until I realized that Zone Alarm was not allowing the connections... now I'm used to being prompted with Zone Alarm, but it was refusing to prompt on requested connections or even when I tried to force it locally... Only after disabling zone alarm was I able to restore the connection functionality. Strange indeed.
Another thing I noticed is you can specify exceptions for specific network interfaces (assuming you have more than one). You may want to make sure that the interface you have connected to the 'net is also marked to exclude 3389 from it's firewall filtering.
... bless their icy little heart, block port 3389 to 'protect us.' No amount of pleading, cajoling or screaming will get it unblocked.
My kids live in another state and use PCs. Maybe this hint will finally get our machines to talk.
Microsoft is full of it, as usual.
For quite a while now, RDC has supported non-standard port calls which allows you to port forward to any number of Windows machines through a Linux box using SSH.
Simply set up your SSH tunnels with:
-L 13389:192.168.1.1:3389 (to machine 1)
-L 23389:192.168.1.2:3389 (to machine 2)
etc.
run multiple copies of RDC and connection to:
127.0.0.1:13389 (to machine 1)
127.0.0.1:23389 (to machine 2)
etc.
for as many connections that your bandwidth can support.
Explicitly supporting something, and something actually working are two totally different things.