IT Doesn't Have To Be A Marathon

Though it might not occur to everyone immediately, IT support work can involve quite a bit of walking. Installing new systems, for some reason the server room is in the basement (a relic of a time when this “computer stuff” was very clearly going to be a fad), setting up and testing for presentations, just so much walking. But there could be less walking. Enter Remote Desktop. Though by default it is not enabled, when active, it can enable you to examine and interact with other systems.

For example, if you were on Windows 11, and wanted to enable Remote Desktop, you could Right-click the Start icon...

and going to Settings, then scroll down to Remote Desktop.

While you’re there, you could turn Remote Desktop on, if that’s important to you for some reason. You could click the arrow next to that toggle in order to select the port that Remote Desktop uses, whether or not you want Remote Desktop connections to use Network Level Authentication (you do), and the users that can access your computer in this manner. To be clear, the computer that you’re connecting to must have you listed in this in order to use Remote Desktop Connection. If the toggle is set to “On”, then there should also be the option to Select the name of the computer that the connected computer would see your machine as.

Once you’ve already done that, in order to use Remote Desktop, now that both machines have it enabled, you enter “Remote Desktop” in the Windows Search Bar and select Remote Desktop Connection. Entering the correct information in the “Computer” and “User name” fields should prompt you for login information, after which you should be connected to the other computer. If I were doing this often, I would save the connection settings. Makes things quicker in the future.

Now that you can access the art professo’s computer without walking across campus, the only thing you need to worry about is walking over there to bring over the usb drive with the registry file that you need to fix their obscure Microsoft Excel issue. But wait, I misled you! Instead, from the Local Resources tab in Remote Desktop Connection...

you can select “More…” > Drives...

and then you can share your hard drive(s) with the computer you’re remotely connected to. Now, instead of going all that way, you can transfer files directly through the remote connection. Less walking!

Now Remote Desktop can definitely help in such situations, but it becomes more beneficial with every step you don’t have to take. Across campus can seem like a long way, but with the right setup, you can avoid a costly and time-consuming trip across country...or further.