Windows remote desktop help

[Wh33lman]

so im lazy and cant be bothered to get up, go to my desktop, pull a file and put it on a flash drive, then go back to my laptop. so ive been trying to set up a remote desktop. i can see the desktop for the laptop and vice versa on the network, but i dont know how to allow my laptop access. ive followed all the instructions on the microsoft website and changed all the settings to allow access.

when i double click on my desktop from the laptop, it prompts a username and password. i put in the desktop name as the username, and "password" as the password. my desktop doest have any password that i know of but it doesnt let me try to access without one.

so i supose my question is this:

am i doing something ridiculous? have everything set up properly, and just missing a password, or do i need to go on my desktop and create some kind of account that my laptop can then use to gain access?

my laptop is running windows vista home basic, and my desktop windows 7 professional. i understand that this connection is only going to work one way, and that win 7 wont connect to vista.

Google has failed me, and this is the largest group of computer experts i know.

[Psyrus]

am i doing something ridiculous? have everything set up properly, and just missing a password, or do i need to go on my desktop and create some kind of account that my laptop can then use to gain access?

You can't utilize remote desktop without a password, from my experience.

Set a password for your login (like "a") for example, or make a special account for logging in with the remote desktop.

Another option if you don't like the above is running teamviewer, which runs over port 80 and has fit my needs very well, as there are no worries about vista/xp/windows/pro/home/starter or whatever, it just works.

And is this on an internal network/lan? If so,why not just set up file sharing so that you can access the file from your laptop?

[Deadfast]

As Psyrus says, you're probably setting up the wrong thing. If all you want is to share files you need to set up file sharing. The easiest way to do that is to add both computers to a workgroup.

[Wh33lman]

both computers are(supposedly) part of the workgroup "workgroup". but not a single website can tell me where i need to go to access the files.

[Doc.Pock]

Are the pcs both w7? Are they on the same lan? Then you can use the feature called home group. Its a usefull library sharing thingy and it works seamlessly if conditions are met...

[Psyrus]

both computers are(supposedly) part of the workgroup "workgroup". but not a single website can tell me where i need to go to access the files.

The easiest way is just to navigate directly to the computer name.

For example in my old network, my family's computers were set up as such:

- main_pc
- mom_laptop
- dad_laptop
- secondary
- server

To access one of those computers (and their shared directories) when they're networked, we merely use the double slash \\ to start the address, either by IP or by computer name.

So if I was on main_pc (10.1.1.10) and wanted to access files on my server (10.1.1.100) I could open windows explorer and type:

\\server
---or---
\\10.1.1.100

This would bring up the shared folders of the server. If I wanted to dig deeper, and I knew the admin account password, I used

\\server\c$ ($ is for drive), and that would give me access to the main drive. The server had 6 hard drives, a couple in RAID and so I had a C, E, T, and M drive, so I could access them through

\\server\c$
\\server\t$
\\server\m$

and so forth.

You can also set up direct folder sharing on the server's OS, which means when you open

\\server

those folders will be accessible to anyone who meets your set permissions requirements.

I hope that helps. You can also map drives

[Wh33lman]

i typed \\owner-pc in my explorer bar, but it still prompts me for a username and password.

[Beee8190]

Afaik every time you create a home group, windows will generate said password for said connection.

Are you sure THIS - is not the password thingy?

[CommunistComma]

Why are you trying to use the windows bs? I have never had luck with it.
Just get teamviewer andr you could drag and drop the files onto a shared folder. A shared folder is a lot easier to set up than remote desktop.

If you're set on windows, remember remote desktop doesn't come with home premium, only business and above.