RealVNC on Windows Vista

RDP is a great protocol for accessing a remote Windows desktop in terms of the user experience, but one significant drawback is that you can't use it to share the screen with a local user. Not good when you're trying to explain something or gather information about a problem.

RealVNC is a great workaround for this, however, if you're using the free versiona and running Windows Vista there is a gotach - you'll have to choose not to install the VNC server as a service, and instead rely on the user to start it manually. This is due to a new security feature that restricts access to the console session. An alternate solution is to add the user-mode shortcut to the startup folder so that it automatically runs at logon. This still requires a local user to be present to log onto the machine, but I assume that you can use RDP in the other cases.