Comments on: remote desktop connection to localhost: a regression in Windows 7?

By: DCam

DCam — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 01:33:12 +0000

@Dude: The server didn’t change at all when I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. I took that to mean the problem was client side. I only had to use a different port because the RDC service was running locally, and so Putty couldn’t have bound to :3389.

@Eric: Glad to hear that local ports do not need to accept from other hosts.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to RDC for several years.

By: Dude

Dude — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:09:56 +0000

It is not a port issue and doesn’t have anything to do with how putty accepts the connections on your client machine. Quite simply, the server doesn’t like it if you connect on 127.0.0.1. The connection establishment succeeds, but the software refuses to communicate (without dropping the connection). (You can telnet to localhost 3389 on a Windows 7 machine and you get a connection.) If you use 127.0.0.2, the connection not only succeeds but the RDP session is established.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:25:25 +0000

Confirming, you do not need to enable “Local ports accept connections from other hosts”. Just change the IP as above to 127.0.0.2 and continue to use as normal.

Very happy, thanks for this!

By: Fred

Fred — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:13:44 +0000

Thank you! Very helpful indeed.

By: John R

John R — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:25:15 +0000

Thanks for sharing! Nice to see I wasn’t the only one having this problem and happy you took the time to post the solution. Great job!

By: Apo

Apo — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:47:47 +0000

i found out, that if you use port 3391 instead of 3390…it will work without any changes in putty!

just a port issue!

By: Mitch N

Mitch N — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:48:49 +0000

It appears you can also do this in putty by making your *source* port be 127.0.0.2:3390, which will get putty to listen on the alternate port. That worked for me without requiring me to allow everyone on the local subnet to access my tunnel.

By: tender

tender — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:37:14 +0000

Thank you.
Your post helped me to use RD with the mess of windows versions and behaviors (7 ultimate x64 in this case).

By: Mario Gluščić

Mario Gluščić — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:02:14 +0000

Thank you so much.
On Windows 7 Ultimate this is true, you must have these settings you’ve mentioned (that’s OS on my desktop computer), but it actually works with localhost:3389 on my laptop (HP DV7) with Windows 7 Home Premium, both 64-bit. No idea why is like that. But even so, you really helped me and I thank you very much.