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When I walk up to one of my locked desktops I type in the password and unlock the desktop. I would like to do the same thing remotely.

Immagine this: a friend is at my house and needs wants to play some awesome game on my computer; or perhaps they need to get something off the desktop or fix something, but the screen is locked!! I can A) tell them the password; B) change the password remotly; C) connect and unlock the screen for them.

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4 Answers

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Install a variant of VNC. It will give you access to the machine's graphical interface right at the logon screen and onward, including when the desktop is locked. There are different variants for each of the operating systems listed so you'll have to do some homework.

Don't forget to forward ports 5900 for Windows machines and 5901 for Linux/Mac machines in the router. These are the defaults but can be changed if need be.

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Nice suggestion. LogMeIn would also be a good approach to the same solution, as it doesn't require configuring port forwarding or installing a VNC client elsewhere. – nhinkle♦ Aug 17 '10 at 18:27
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Gotomypc will do this, too.

Once you let your friend use the machine, you're more or less giving them the password anyway.

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I think the password protection in this case was installed not against friends but everyone else. OP, please correct me if I wrong. – whitequark Aug 17 '10 at 7:55
if the OP trusted the friend with the password, as discussed in option (A) in the question, then options (B) and (C) would be unnecessary, and the question would never have been asked. – gbroiles Aug 18 '10 at 6:47
its about casual one time access from someone I trust. I would like to say unlock it and then I can watch from vnc or equivalent. – Arthur Ulfeldt Aug 20 '10 at 23:46
that makes sense, but if they really do want to play an awesome game, having you watch remotely on VNC will absolutely kill game performance. – gbroiles Aug 21 '10 at 2:10
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You need a free VNC server for Windows or something like radmin, which is essentially the same, but let's you do more things with remote PCs.

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up vote -1 down vote

How about enabling a guest account for them to use?

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