Windows 7: Cannot establish remote desktop connection

I cannot establish a remote desktop connection between two computers in my home LAN running Windows 7.

I have two computers in my home network, VAIO and SCALEO. On VAIO I installed Windows 7. On SCALEO I installed both Windows XP and Windows 7 as dual boot configuration. The Windows 7 version I am using is the free downloadable evaluation installation of Windows 7 Enterprise. Both installations are activated.

When I run Windows XP on SCALEO (and Windows 7 on VAIO), I can establish RDC between both computers, both ways, without any problems.

When I run Windows 7 on SCALEO (hence, on both machines), establishing RDC fails on either machine with the following message:

"Your credentials did not work. The credentials that were used to connect to ... (VAIO/SCALEO) did not work. Please enter new credentials."

I have followed all instructions in the tutorial of this forum how to set up a computer for remote desktop connection. I can see both machines in their network folders. I successfully established a homegroup where both machines share data. I am able to share folders on both machines and map them as network drives. I am able to copy data between both machines.

Does anyone have an idea why just the RDC doesn't work? Help would be greatly appreciated.

The problem is solved.

On both machines, I have a user account "Ulrich" with administrator privileges and password.

When I try to establish a RDC, Windows suggests account "Ulrich" and requests a password. When I enter the password, RDC cannot be established.

When I choose "Use another account", enter user name "Ulrich" and the password, voilà - RDC is established. This was sort of unexpected.

It seems that Windows is at first trying to use the account of the local computer's domain, which doesn't work on the remote computer.

Perhaps, the reason is that the account on SCALEO was created with a different name and later renamed. I have to verify this.

Confirmed. The account on SCALEO was created during setup as "Ulrich von Engelberg" and later renamed to "Ulrich". However, the "real" name of the account seems to remain unchanged, including the C:\Users subfolder.

When I try to establish RDP from SCALEO to VAIO, it says that it connects with user ID "Ulrich" but _actually_ uses "Ulrich von Engelberg" which doesn't exist on VAIO. After explicitly entering "Ulrich", it works. The other way, connecting from VAIO to SCALEO I have to enter "Ulrich von Engelberg" as user, otherwise it will fail.

After renaming the user account back, creating a new one named "Ulrich" and deleting the old one, everything works fine now.

Summary: When renaming a user account, there is a "Display name" (the renamed one) and a "Real name" (the original unrenamed one). When connecting via Remote Desktop Connection from such a renamed account, it shows the display name but uses the real name. When connecting to a renamed account, the real name instead of the display name has to be used.

To avoid such problems, don't use the "rename user account" feature. Better create a new account with the changed name, copy the settings and delete the old one.

This is perhaps not even new Windows 7 behaviour, but I think it is unexpected and very confusing.

Thanks a lot!!! This solved my issue, I just went to c:\Users and found the old user name and it worked for the connection of remote desktop and file shares