The logon attempt failed when using Remote Desktop Connection

Question

I enabled Remote Desktop Connection, forwarded the ports, the services are running, but I can't connect.

On the 'host' computer, running the client program for IP address 127.0.0.1 is successful. I enter my admin username and password, and I log in successfully.

On the actual computer I want to act like a client, connecting to my host's public IP address gives me a logon prompt. I enter the same username and password, but I get "The logon attempt failed".

How do I fix this?

Solution

When you enter the login info, you need to enter the domain or machine the account is registered on. So if your remote host is "foo" and your client is "bar" and both have "administrator" accounts with different passwords, then specify "foo\administrator" (and then its PW) on the client connect side. The syntax is "<machine name> <back slash> <user name>".

Comments

[thane]

What ports did you forward? What is your network configuration? Is it just host -> router -> ISP?

[Logan Spencer]

Yes, it is host -> router -> ISP and it's not a problem with my network as RDC can connect fine, just the password is wrong.

[Logan Spencer]

But why does 'username' work on 127.0.0.1 (on the host)?

[jdh]

Because when you are on the host, the hostname is the default source (used to lookup the login info). When using domains, this is the domain name that hosts the login database.

[ricastro]

If you don't know the hostname of the remote computer you can use the \username syntax (i.e. backslash username). This will tell the remote computer to use the local username account. To login as the local administrator account you can use \Administrator