Need help with Remote Desktop Connection

Hi all,

I'm writing a full article on everything related to remote controlling. Having no 900c (or any CE .NET 4.2 devices), I can't test this myself, so, I ask this here:

I've seen the 900c has a "Remote Desktop Connection" app to access TS / RD hosts, as opposed to TSC in earlier H/PC and all PPC versions.

I'd like to know whether this is already able to

1, use high-color mode (with RDP 5.1 hosts) as opposed to the "standard" 8-bit modes

2, able to streamline sound (user 'perryinva' at http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16016 stated "And the tab under sound in options of Remote Desktop is grayed out", which may mean it does have sound streaming capabilities)

3, map local (handheld) drives (memory types) into the remote desktop File Explorer

4, synchronize the remote / local clipboard

(as opposed to Pocket PC TSC versions)

I'd really welcome some screenshots of the config tabs as I haven't been able to find them anywhere. Of course, you'll be given the credit for the screenshots / info in the forthcoming article

hey menneisyys, so you finally posted here

1) yes 16 bit mode is selectable.
2) not sure what you mean here. it has options to send the sound over or leave it at the server - or do nothing. is this what you meant?
3) yes it has the option for that but as this functionality seems to require the client to be able to share its files to the server (and not the other way around?!), it doesn't work - or i haven't been able to get it to work. if i'm wrong about this assumption let me know what i should try. i would love to get this working
4) nope i miss that too

other than that.. it's a lot cooler than the pocketpc tsc app...

btw someone tried the ce5 rdp that i sent him, on a wm5 device (i should try too), and it worked.

screenshots here: http://cenet.atw.hu/rdpscr.zip want more?

Edited by cmonex 2006-11-28 11:20 AM

I've meant you can stream sound from your desktop to your handheld.

Very good news (TSC - and, for that matter, any current PPC remote control solution - severely lack this.)



In both directions. When you enable the "Disk Drives" checkbox in the Local Resources tab, do you see the new (virtual) drives in the desktop (!) File Explorer? You won't see them anywhere else (for example, in Tocal Commander), only in Explorer. Then, with simple drag and drop, you'll be able to trasnfer files in both directions.



Thanks, they will suffice - thanks again

(BTW, did anyone try to hack RDC to the Pocket PC? It seems it'd be really woerth giving a try because all PPC clients - not just RDP-, but also VNC-based ones and apps that use proprietary protocols; for example, z2Remote - suck hard, feature-wise, compared to this title.)

Edited by Menneisyys 2006-11-28 11:37 AM

Wowz! Can you make it public (or, send it to me too?)

when i enable disk drives, i of course see the new drive in win explorer on the desktop, it is named mobilepro something, but i cannot enter it. i guess that's because CE can't share files. how can i transfer files this way?

yeah i can send you the ce 5 rdp client let me find the files... and i'll upload it on my site.

Wow! Its Menneisyys!!! Its an honor to have you (finally) visit us. You will have to say hi to us on IRC sometime on EFNet, #HPCDev. I know you have been to #pocketpc because of the screenshots in your IRC client review. I assure you we talk more about CE than they do there.

I hope to see you post here more often in the future.

Now, about the RDP Client.

Windows CE 4.0 (Yes 4.0!) started shipping with a full port of the desktop RDP 5.1 client back in 2002 or so when it came out. It still shocks me that even the latest WM5 Pocket PC OS ships with the outdated RDP 4.x client that has not been updated since 1999 or so and is near identical to what is available for Handheld PC Pro/2000.

Now to (re)answer your questions to the best of my ability. Yeah, I know cmonex answered most of these...but I am in an answering mood :
1. All color modes supported by your device's hardware should work (excluding Greyscale).

2. Yup, Streaming Sound should work fine as long as the RDP Server supports it.

3. I believe this is possible but the OEM either needs to implement it or add it as an optional component of the OS. Windows CE does indeed support SMB shares like Windows XP(with some limits like no encryption) so the OEM may need to add this feature to their OS for it to work correctly. I know the Microsoft Mira Tablets that ran Windows CE 4.1 were able to do this. The WinCE device's filesystem was mounted as a drive on the remotely accessed XP PC while the tablet was connected.
4. Yep, clipboard sync works great. I only wish it worked in that dated 4.0 RDP client Pocket PC/HPC pro has.

According to the MS documentation, the RDP client also supports remote printing and serial port remoting...but some of this needs to be implemented on the OEM's end. This is a very fully feature RDP client for the most part as it is also used on Windows CE Thin clients.

Hope this helped.

TFGBD the clipboard sync doesn't work for me. any trick for that?

Thanks for the kind words and the great summary

BTW, are you absolutely sure the PPC TSC client is still RDP4-based? In my bandwidth measurements, it turned out to consume little badwidth compared to the Mocha client, which is surely RDP4-based (I've asked the author of the Mocha client about this.) I'm pretty sure it does support RDP5.

Menneisyys, did you get my email with the link in it? hope it works well for you.

btw, we're (TFGBD and i) now trying to hack smb for devices that don't have it.. so file transfer would be possible, woo hoo.

Edited by cmonex 2006-11-29 9:11 AM

Yeah, got it, thanks - just trying to hack your files on my WM2003, WM2003SE and WM5 devices. So far, with little success - much as the WM5 version starts and connects in, it's impossible to enter anything on the SIP / external keyboard. Pasting into the text input fields doesn't work either. That is, I can't even log in to remote desktops...

hrm, strange. i'll ask the guy who got it working on his mio a701 how he got past that.

he just says it just worked right away. on a mio A701.

but you have to know, he copied ALL the ce 5 files i sent to him (a full platform) into windows folder on the mio, for fun. maybe that helped somehow. oh and he didn't have to import the rdp.reg.

Edited by cmonex 2006-11-29 1:44 PM

Odd. The clipboard sync always worked fine on my Wibook and some of the emulated x86 CE devices. Perhaps its a registry setting or optional OS component. I'll look into it.


Menneisyys:
I'm not 100% sure about it being RDP4 based...but it always looked that way to me. It never supported any RDP 5.1 specific features like Sound or even more than 8 bit color and does not really seem to behave any differently than the the WinCE 2.11 and 3.0 clients that are known to be straight ports of RDP4. If anything, it could be some kind of bastard child of RDP 4 and RDP5....but I doubt it. Or, it could be RDP5 based but without support for the RDP5.1 updates. (like sound)

I would not really use the Mochasoft client as a good indicator of anything. I tried it a few times and its obviously not as good as any of the Microsoft versions. (Its quite slow and buggy) Its not really suprising that the MS client would work better. Its based on the official RDP sources while the Mochasoft author had to write his client from the ground up using publicly available documents.

Thats really odd that you can't enter text into the edit controls! There should be no problems with them! It just uses standard Windows CE GUI controls and any hardware keyboard or Soft Input Panel really should be able to enter text into those! (not to mention the fact that it worked on other WM5 WinCE devices)

BTW: Please note that the screenshots cmonex posted are from the NEC MobilePro 900c. NEC Resized the dialogs so they would fit on a 640x240 device. The standard unmodified ones that come with the WinCE Platform Builder are sized more for VGA and larger screens.

I hope my post was helpful. See you next time!

Edited by TFGBD 2006-11-29 9:20 PM

TFGBD - i cannot do any input either on my qtek 9000. could you look into this...?

btw the simpad with the english cenet 4.1 has the same problem with its own built in rdp client (in rom)... hrm. no other roms on it have this problem. (german 4.1 or english 4.0 should be fine iirc.. and of course 4.2 )

i can post screenshots for 800x480 if that helps..

Edited by cmonex 2006-11-29 9:32 PM

OHHH! I must not have read what he said right. I assumed me meant he could not enter text in the actual configuration dialogs themselves! Now I understand he is talking about when the client has connected. (Isn't he?) I think that is a registry setting somewhere. I had they problem on my Jornada 720 when I tried to use a SIP with RDP also. I'll look up the registry entry and post it if I figure it out.