Enable Remote Desktop from domain controller

Would you like to learn how to use a group policy to enable the remote desktop service? In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable the remote desktop service on all computers in the domain using a GPO.

Windows 2012 R2
Windows 2016
Windows 2019
Windows 10
Windows 7

Equipment list

The following section presents the list of equipment used to create this tutorial.

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Tutorial GPO - Enable the remote desktop service

On the domain controller, open the group policy management tool.

Create a new group policy.

Enter a name for the new group policy.

In our example, the new GPO was named: MY-GPO.

On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder named Group Policy Objects.

Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.

On the group policy editor screen, expand the Computer configuration folder and locate the following item.

Access the Connections option.

Enable the option named Allow users to connect remotely by using Remote Desktop Services.

Optionally, access the security folder to enable the Network-level authentication.

Enable the option named Require user authentication for remote connections by using Network-level authentication.

To save the group policy configuration, you need to close the Group Policy editor.

Congratulations! You have finished the GPO creation.

Tutorial GPO - Create a firewall rule

On the group policy editor, select the option named Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

Create a new Inbound rule.

Select the Custom option.

Allow connection on port 3389.

To save the group policy configuration, you need to close the Group Policy editor.

Congratulations! You have finished the firewall configuration.

Tutorial - Applying the GPO to enable the Remote desktop service

On the Group policy management screen, you need to right-click the Organizational Unit desired and select the option to link an existent GPO.

In our example, we are going to link the group policy named MY-GPO to the root of the domain.

After applying the GPO you need to wait for 10 or 20 minutes.

During this time the GPO will be replicated to other domain controllers.

To test the configuration, verify the configuration of the remote desktop service on a remote computer.

Here is the remote desktop service, after our configuration.

In our example, the remote desktop service was enabled on all domain computers using a GPO.