Remote Desktop logon does not complete

I have two XP Pro machines. RDC has worked very well for some time,
but occasionally (and it's happening now), I am unable to logon. The
symptom is that I get connected and see the default background, and
in this case it even prompts me to change the password on the remote
machine since it is about to expire. But then after saying no, it
hangs for a minute or so. Eventually it redraws the background and
just goes away. If I do not un-maximize the RDC window when the
program starts, my session may even hang for a little while before
timing out (i.e., Windows is unresponsive on the machine I am
connecting from). The remote system has a screen saver but I've
found it situations where it hasn't even kicked in when I get back
to work (where the machine I am trying to connect to is located),
but this is not always the case so I don't see it being involved.
I'm going through a firewall to get to the remote system but when
I've had these problems in the past it hasn't made a difference if I
do it remotely or on the building LAN.

Any idea what could cause this to happen (or how to fix it)? One
time when I had this problem for an extended period (or maybe it was
just refusing the connection entirely), I disabled and then enabled
remote desktop on the remote machine and it solved it. I have not
rebooted the remote system since this started happening.

Bill

Update: I tried disabling and enabling remote desktop and that did
not change anything. I checked the system log and there's nothing
there. And it takes abut 30 seconds for the connection attempt to
time out. The screens of the system I am connecting to go black
during his time, and when the RDC finally terminates on the
connecting computer, I am force to logon again.

Any ideas where to look? I guess I should just reboot and that will
solve the problem for now.

Bill

Bill wrote:
> I have two XP Pro machines. RDC has worked very well for some time, but
> occasionally (and it's happening now), I am unable to logon. The symptom
> is that I get connected and see the default background, and in this case
> it even prompts me to change the password on the remote machine since it
> is about to expire. But then after saying no, it hangs for a minute or
> so. Eventually it redraws the background and just goes away. If I do
> not un-maximize the RDC window when the program starts, my session may
> even hang for a little while before timing out (i.e., Windows is
> unresponsive on the machine I am connecting from). The remote system
> has a screen saver but I've found it situations where it hasn't even
> kicked in when I get back to work (where the machine I am trying to
> connect to is located), but this is not always the case so I don't see
> it being involved. I'm going through a firewall to get to the remote
> system but when I've had these problems in the past it hasn't made a
> difference if I do it remotely or on the building LAN.
>
> Any idea what could cause this to happen (or how to fix it)? One time
> when I had this problem for an extended period (or maybe it was just
> refusing the connection entirely), I disabled and then enabled remote
> desktop on the remote machine and it solved it. I have not rebooted the
> remote system since this started happening.
>
> Bill