It's Lenny's Fault

If you've ever tried to use a computer running Windows 7 Home Premium as a Remote Desktop host you know the sad truth. You can't! If you ask Microsoft they'll tell you to get Windows 7 Professional (and pay us extra money for it). However, if you're like me I only needed 1 feature from Windows 7 Professional that wasn't in Home Premium, Remote Desktop.

Luckily, there is a very easy solution (and don't say VNC… it sucks). There is a very easy way to enable remote desktop on Windows 7 Home Premium. Simply follow the instructions below and you'll be running a Remote Desktop (RDP) host on Windows 7 Home in a matter of minutes.

The First thing you need to do is download the Concurrent RDP Windows 7 RTM Patcher. You can get it here or here (mirror). Please, be safe and scan this file for viruses after you download it. I scanned it when I used it and it came up clean, but I don't host this file / didn't create it and you can't be too careful.

Now that you have the patcher downloaded we can start the process of unlocking remote desktop on your Windows 7 Home Premium computer.

1. Unzip the file you downloaded.
2. Right-click on the install file and click Run as administrator. If you receive a UAC prompt click "yes"
3. After this the Windows 7 RTM patcher will be opened in a new command window. It will look like this.
   

   Windows 7 Remote Desktop Patcher

   At this prompt feel free to read the text then press any key to start the process

4. Next you will see the following screen. This is asking if you want to allow multiple sessions per user. In most cases you do. So my advise is answer yes. So, you want to type Y and hit enter.
   

   Windows 7 enable Remote Desktop

    

5. Then you will be presented another question (pictured below) this will allow you to use a blank password on RDP. Again, I advise answering yes. Even if you say yes you CAN still use a password if you want, but if you ever want to use a blank password you can't if you answer no. Leave your options open and type Y and hit enter.

   

6. Wait and wait.. for me this step took quite a while. The patcher will now do all the work the double check that the fix worked. For whatever reason it waited a long time to ensure the service was actually listening for Remote Desktop connections. Once it's complete your screen should look like this.
   

   Remote Desktop Enabled on Windows 7

   Press any key and you should be all set.

On my computer for some reason it failed to properly configure the firewall. If this happens to you just go to the Windows control panel and click on firewall. Then, add an incoming TCP exception on port 3389 and you should be good to go.

Thats it now you can enjoy using remote desktop (RDP) on Windows 7 Home Premium.