Ok so here is the situation, you are at work/school and for some stupid reason, the work/school PC you have is dumb terminal where you can’t access any websites you would like to otherwise. What do you do, well, you can try online proxy servers, which again are blocked and if not blocked, if you keep pn accessing them daily, eventually they get blocked.
So what is the solution?
The only thing which came to my mind was a remote desktop connection with my PC at home so that I can do anything, after all it's my home PC, isn't it?
So much for an idea! The remote desktop does not work because of the crappy firewall, now what?
Well there is a solution, it's remote desktop web connection
Here are the steps I followed to get the Remote Desktop Web Connection up and running on my home computer
Task 1 - Install IIS + Remote Desktop Web Connection
- Go to Control Panel
- Go to Add/Remove Programs
- Click Add/Remove Windows Components
- Check "Internet Information Services (IIS)"
- Click Details
- Click World Wide Web Service
- Click Details
- Check Remote Desktop Web Connection
- Click OK
- Click OK
- Click Next and complete the installation
If everything goes well you would have successfully installed Remote Desktop Web Connection, to verify this, type this in the Start > Run "%systemroot%\Web\TsWeb" and click OK
If a folder opens up with several files, you're done, the installation was successful
Task 2 - Opening Ports in your Router / Firewall
Now you'll have to open ports on your router / firewall, I would recommend disabling your firewall for testing and then open the ports later.
Then open the following ports and redirect it to your PC on the same port:
- Port 80
- Port 3389 (Default Remote Desktop Port)
Now open http://xxx/tsweb from another computer on your LAN
where, xxx is either your PCs IP address / server name
If everything went well you will see a remote desktop login screen, click connect and you should see a Windows Login screen.
Make sure that no user is logged in to your PC and also you have an user account which is configured with a password, you can only connect to users with a password thru remote desktop.
In the login screen, login using a user which has a password, if logged in, you have remote desktop web connection configured properly.
Task 3 - Connect to your PC thru Internet
Now to connect to your PC thru internet, signup on something like http://www.no-ip.com and get yourself a domain which redirects to your PC.
If you signup on no-ip, then also download their client which updates your IP everytime it changes.
Assuming you have got yourself a domain and are ready to connect, ask one of your friends to open the link http://yourdomain.com/tsweb, if you are able to see the remote desktop login screen and able to connect, then everything is working fine.
Task 4 - Changing your Remote Desktop Web Connection Port
If you are behind a proxy or a firewall at your work then you will need to use another port for remote desktop because the port 3389 would be most probably blocked.
So now you have to configure your remote desktop at port 443 (the https port) which will be enabled because majority of the proxys allow ports 80 and 443.
- First follow this KB to configure IIS not to listen on 443 because we want remote desktop to listen on 443, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326945
- Next follow this KB to configure remote desktop to listen on 443,http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290391
- Next follow this KB to configure remote desktop web connection to listen on 443,http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759
Once this is done, open the port 443 on your router to redirect it to your PC
If all went well you should be able to connect to your desktop from the internet and behind a proxy.
Happy Browsing!
BTW: Don't mind te grammar and spelling, I'm totally drunk! :)
