Homegroup and Remote Desktop

I have only done some limited searching on this, and only recall seeing this "HomeGroupUser$" maybe once or twice. So for my memory, where are you seeing this? I am under RD, select users, advanced, then did a find. I dont have this "HomeGroupuser$" shown.

the best direction i can point you in is to go to start and type in control userpasswords2 (with space in between, as typed). Root around in there, as i just remembered and came across this, yet to explore it... again, lol, like i was going to the first time i ran across this.

Hope this helps out some.

Hi there
I'm still a bit confused as why you still need RDP for things like burning CD's / DVD's / archiving data on remote machines.

You can still do this by "Bog standard" File sharing -- it's no problem to share a device such as a CD / DVD drive between different machines on a network (after all Virtual Machines do this all the time).

I'm not saying RDP is of no use -- just for your application I can't see why you even need to logon to the remote machine if all you need is for an authorised user to be able to access its resources.

It *Might* possibly consume less resources to run the application on the remote machine (such as the DVD burning application) but with a decently powered machine simple device sharing might work just as well - especially as you are on a LAN with physical access to all the machines.

(Of course from time to time you WILL need to be on the other machine such as to apply updates / re-boot or whatever - but that's another whole ballpark).

Cheers
jimbo

FreakyFerret said:

Remote Desktop in Win7 works great. It saves my credentials fine. I also like the new jumplists for it on the taskbar.

My problem is I added "HomeGroupUser$" as "Remote Desktop User" on the remote machines. Checking the "Local Users and Groups" item shows this user as a member of the RDU group. By my understanding of Home Group security, I should be able to remote into the PC using any account on the local computer without the need to provide any credentials. However, this does not work. Providing the credentials for the account on the local computer also does not work. In order to remote into the computer, I have provide credentials pointing to an account local on the PC I am remoting into.

On my local machine, I have account Ferret. On the remote computer I have account Freaky. On the remote computer, members of the "Remote Desktop Users" group are Freaky and HomeGroupUser$. I can use Ferret to access files on the remote computer because HomeGroup accepts that as a valid account. I cannot use Ferret to remote into the remote computer though. I must use the Freaky account name and password to gain remote desktop access.

Does that clear it up? Sorry I haven't explained it well.

How would you be able to login to a particular account, switching back and forth without providing credentials to a certain desktop? there is no user desktop named as such HomegroupUser... say you have 5 user accounts on that pc. and say user 3 didnt wish to share his files with the rest of the homegroup, or set as private. How would trying to login under a HomegroupUser deal with any kind of security or permission restrictions setup on any other given account. Time restrictions, permission levels, software restrictions. And even if admin account, still the privacy issue of any docs not put on the homegroup. Theorectically, it sounds like you want a superAdmin account to see and do all of the entire pc, no matter what account could be affected. Under what desktop would you pop up on or use if you use a login as HomegroupUser$ when there is no such username on the network? Its not like a hidden admin account or guest.

With your given scenario and thinkings, then if you have .net anything installed, try logging in under ASPNET(users) or ALPHAUSER$(homeuser).... wont work either for you.

try also going to user accounts and family safety/ credential manager.

[edit] also cmd / lusrmgr (little more advanced)

Digger, yeah, that's what I'm figuring too (about accounts). Only reason I tried it was cause as I was reading some documentation on HomeGroups (some part of the Win7 help file, don't remember where), it mentioned using HomeGroups with Remote Desktops. Seemed odd to me for reasons you mentioned in last post, but thought I'd give it a try. Was only reason I even setup a HomeGroup on my LAN actually. Since I couldn't get it to work, I thought I was doing something wrong. Your insight backs up my own initial concerns and now I'll consider my curiousity satisfied. :) Thanks.

Jimbo, I could share the burner across the network and then use burning software on the local computer to use it.

However, that would still require me to run the burning software on the local machine.

It would require me not to reboot or power down the local machine.

Depending on how resource intensive the software is, it could impact performance enough to matter to me. Remember, my local machine is my gaming rig which has had every possible tweak done to it to gain performance. I don't even install Adobe Reader on here cause of the very small launcher process it loads at boot. I just remote into the other PC and read PDFs there. With the newest 7 build, I found out I can actually play videos on the remote machine and watch them with equal FPS as if I played them locally.

And then there's the network clog. The files I want to burn are local to the burning computer. If I made the burner shared, and the drive with files shared, I'd be pulling the files to this computer, then pushing them right back again to the burner.


I agree to simply access resources, network shares are the way to go. Absolutely. In this case, the resource I want to access is the processing power of the other machines. Remote Desktop is the network share I'm using for this.

I'm liking this discussion with you though, Jimbo. It's giving me ideas for a few other projects. Any other advice or suggestions you can give? :)

Digger, if you go to the user credential vault, you'll see listing for the remote computer's network share and "TERMSRV" (which is terminal server). You'll see the network shares use account "HomeGroupUser$".

If you want to see the account exactly, right click "Computer" and select "Manage". Go to "Local Users and Groups". In users you'll see "HomeGroupUser$". In groups you'll see "Home Users" which consists of local accounts and the HomeGroupUser$ account and Administrator account. I'm guessing one is supposed to use "Home Users" when giving rights rather than HomeGroupUser$.

If you don't have those listed, you might need to setup a Home Group first. I don't recall seeing them before, but I never really poked around in that part of computer management in 7 much.


Edit: And I just tried to remote in using HomeGroupUser$ and the homegroup password. Didn't work absolutely.

right, thats because "HomeGroupUser$" is not an actual account. I believe the $ is the giveaway. Lots more ppl on here know more about what i'm trying to speak on. I believe that the HomeGroupUser$ is an association of type. For example, not every user on the same local pc has to be a member of THE Homegroup, or any homegroup for that matter. That person has to manually join, also choosing what files to share on the Homegroup, thus making them a HomeGroupUser. If not, then they would just fall under User or User$. I would think the same goes for the other said accounts, like AlphaUser$ would fall under the admins, or group i should say, into what permissions and security levels.

I dont want to sound dumb here, but have you tried to rdp to those computers as the administrator of said pc?