THANK YOU, Richie! While I do know quite a bit about firewalls and how they work, I’m not real strong about the implementation of Windows Firewall. You taught me to look for something I wasn’t aware of and now I have a remote connection established on 2 of my 3 remote machines. (More on the 3rd below.)
Basically, I was setting the firewall to off on the Private network I know I’m using, but nothing else. When I followed your advice and set it off on Private, Public and Domain (somehow I had missed the import of that Advanced Settings under Firewall). Once I got everything off, the connections started.
I’m going to consider this thread resolved. I still have that 3rd machine to connect, but there must be some difference and I’ll search that out. I’ll open new threads if needed for that machine and for some of the other questions I’ve come up with and reported here as well as some new issues (all cosmetic or relatively minor).
Tom, no I didn’t try to set up the Remote Desktop other than to activate it. That did nothing for this issue, and I wanted to focus on this.
BTW, while working this, I’ve used Netgear Genie for assistance – and found and reported a number of minor bug there too. Having a remote connections on one of my machines, I just found a new Genie bug this morning.
Thanks, for the help. Rich
PS: I realized that if anyone else has a similar problem, they might want more info on the solution.
For each remote machine, go to
Control Panel > System and Security > Firewall > Advanced Settings
I started by setting all the tabs to “off” to make the remote connection, but then went back and started turning them on. Both the Domain and Public tabs can remain with full Firewall protection. In the Private tab, I selected “Customize” and unchecked the boxes for Wifi (leaves the Wifi connection not protected by Firewall rules). That is where I am now that allows full remote connection ability.
But that does not enable remote connection on my 3rd machine.
Rich