I work in a lab environment, so most of the windows XP machines i enable remote desktop for easy access. All new machines have remote desktop enabled via group policy.
The GP is located here; (link were appropriate in AD structure)
Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Terminal Services, — > Allows users to connect remotely using Terminal Services setting. Enable this.
If you don’t have a domain or don’t have group policy implemented you can still enable remote desktop via the reg command in XP. Here is an example;
Reg Add “\\machinename\hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\Terminal Server” /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Note that this requires admin access to the machine, so you would probably have to authenticate against it first…
net use \\machine /user:domain\user
And last but not least if the firewall is enabled you will also need to add an exception to allow RDP through. Or in my case just disable the firewall completely.