I have used Neorouter for a few years on my PCs and have never had a problem. Neorouter is installed and configured to start up with Windows, and I can interact with any of my PCs as if they were on a local network.

Recently, I have started using the portable version of Neorouter to access my PCs from machines where I can't (or don't want to) actually install Neorouter.

When using Neorouter portable, I have found that if I right-click on a machine in the Network Viewer and select Remote Desktop, that works. From Process Explorer, I can see that Neorouter launches Remote Desktop with a command line like the following:



However, if I try that on my own, outside of the Neorouter interface, it doesn't work. For example, if I type that same command line at a command prompt (or Windows' Run dialog), or if I start Remote Desktop and type in 10.0.0.2 as the address to connect to, Remote Desktop is unable to locate and connect to my remote machine.

Why? How is it that I can access my remote machine if initiated through the Neorouter interface but not otherwise?

This is inconvenient, because when launching Remote Desktop from Neorouter, there is no opportunity to configure the session settings. Ideally, I would like to start up Remote Desktop, type in the machine address I'd like to connect to, configure the various connection settings as desired, and then initiate the connection. This works with my regular Neorouter installs, but not with Neorouter portable.

Hi SWB,

It is by design. Unlike standard NeoRouter client, the portable client does not install the virtual network adapter driver to your computer and it hooks the remote desktop client so that it connect to the remote machine over neorouter virtual network. If you run the mstsc.exe (RDC) separately, it tries to connect to the virtual IP over the physical network, hence failed for sure.

It's easy for you to custom the RDC parameters. If you don't want to pass in parameters, you can change the Remote Desktop addon in the Add-On manager and modify the command like to mstsc.exe, then it will launch the application from NR portable and you can change the settings from mstsc UI.


Thanks,
KevinZ - NeoRouter team

Wow, thanks! I didn't realize I could do that!

That indeed works and allows me to edit the RDP connection settings before connecting.

I'm still left wondering, though, how in the world this works. Clearly, Neorouter is exploiting an ability in Win32 that I didn't realize existed. How does Neorouter launch mstsc.exe in a way that causes mstsc.exe to route through Neorouter? And how does that routing happen, given that Neorouter portable does not install any virtual network adapters?

One thing I just noticed in Process Explorer is that the NRViewer.exe and mstsc.exe processes appear to be tied together as a Win32 job object (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms684161(v=vs.85).aspx). Is that a clue?

Thanks!

nice post