I am at home and I have established a VPN tunnel and RDP session into my workstation at the office where I work. There is a specific piece of software that I'd like to use. When I'm physically at my workstation, all that is required is the USB stick that contains the license be plugged into the computer. The software has no problem opening and running in that scenario.
When you work in a remote desktop environment, getting access to your locally plugged USB devices can be quite problematic. USB for Remote Desktop is a software allowing redirection of locally plugged USB devices to you remote desktop session. The Server part is installed on the. When connecting via RDP, go to 'Local Resources'. Then select 'More.' Check 'Drives' box and you're good to go. Not sure if this will enable dongle but you can access local USB on your VM.
However, when I am RDPing into the desktop, the software will not open, even though the USB stick is still plugged in to the workstation at the office.
Two interesting points that are worth mentioning:
- After a day at the office, if I leave the software open, then lockthe computer, and later log in over VPN/RDP, I have no problemoperating the software over the remote connection.
- If I log in to my office workstation over LogMeIn, I can open the software without a problem. This was my workaround until LogMeIn ended their free service.
So here are my two questions:
- How does the software 'know' that I am trying to use it through aVPN tunnel?
- What is the difference between an RDP session and aLogMeIn session, with respect to the fact that the software can beopened and run over LogMeIn but not over RDP?
dagrhadagrha
2 Answers
Q: How does the software 'know' that I am trying to use it through a VPN tunnel?
Your program isn't aware of the fact you're connecting through a VPN tunnel. What it's probably looking at is whether you're logged into your computer using the
Console
session. You're always logged into the Console session when you physically log into a computer, and there's only one console session allowed per machine.To confirm you are using the console session, from a Command Prompt run
QWINSTA
, observe the SESSIONNAME
column, and confirm the >
indicator is next to console, in other words it should appear as >console
)Q: What is the difference between an RDP session and a LogMeIn session, with respect to the fact that the software can be opened and run over LogMeIn but not over RDP?
The difference is that by default, Remote Desktop connections don't connect to a Console session, but many remote control/screen sharing applications such as LogMeIn do. Again, use the steps above to determine whether you're connected to the Console session.
You can force Remote Desktop to connect to the console session by running this command from a Command Prompt on your remote computer:
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How does the software 'know' that I am trying to use it through a VPN tunnel?
I'd guess that if they bothered to lock it down to a machine with a USB dongle, then they've probably also put in checks to ensure you're not trying to run it on an Remote Desktop Services (RDS) server, which is what your work machine effectively is when you RDP into it. An RDS server allows multiple people to log into a single machine (where the dongle would be plugged in), and each could have their own session where they could run the software. In turn, avoiding paying the proper licencing.
This check for RDS probably also only happens at start-up of the software, and that's why leaving it open and locking your local session works.
2.What is the difference between an RDP session and a LogMeIn session, with respect to the fact that the software can be opened and run over LogMeIn but not over RDP?
LogmeIn (VNC, TeamViewer, etc.) works differently than RDP. In this case, the important difference is that you can't use LogmeIn to allow multiple users to use the same computer (with their own session), so there's no risk to allowing you to use it in regards to avoiding paying for the right amount of licences.
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