Cannot connect to guest OS

[msuvanto]

Hi,

Being totally new to this please excuse my obvious questions.

I installed XP Pro as a guest on a ESX server... everything looked good and I could use remote desktop client to connect to the guest OS just fine.

Now I just installed Windows 2003 server and cannot connect to it via remote desktop client even if I have the terminal services running.

Is there any other way of connecting to the guest os as a user? Not using the virtual infrastructure client? I dont want everyone being abel to mess with the settings.

Or maybe just get RDC working?

[esiebert7625]

Can you ping the Win2003 VM? You should be able to RDP into it if the VM's network is configured correctly. ESX has no firewall that will block access to the VM's.

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

Right click on My Computer and select properties. Click the Remote tab and then look half way down and click "Enable Remote Desktop on this computer"

It is not enabled by default.

[msuvanto]

Nope... can't ping it.

The XP installs were fine. Nothing has changed from those installs.

This is a plain install of windows 2003 Enterprise edition SP2

[msuvanto]

It is enabled..... and on the second install i enabled Terminal services.

[VirtualNoitall · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Check to see if the firewall has been enabled

[VirtualNoitall]

Also check to ensure your network config is right. Can you ping the default gateway from the virtual machine? Can you ping machines on other subnets?

[msuvanto]

I can ping the host machine... and previously I could ping the old XP installs and RDC into them.

[msuvanto]

Hello,

Check to see if the firewall has been enabled

Checking... and it was. disabling it and restarting....... hope it works.

[msuvanto]

It was the stinking firewall....

Thanks all for the quick help!!!!

[esiebert7625]

How is your network configured on the ESX server? How many vswitches? How many NIC's? Are you using VLAN tagging? It would be helpful if you post the output of the esxcfg-vswitch -l and esxcfg-nics -l commands in the service console.