Installing Logmein When a Console Session Isn’t Available

At my company, we use LogMeIn to provide remote support to our client base. It’s an incredible tool.

However, when installing LogMeIn, it doesn’t work to install thru an RDP session. What happens is that LMI binds to that session rather than to the console and once you logout, there’s nothing left to connect to and you get that black box error about Terminal Server problems.

Here’s the workaround – We’re going to install a VNC server on our target and the VNC viewer on the workstation we’re on. Then when we make the connection via VNC, we’ll be connecting to the console of the server rather than the RDP session we’re using to get there and will be able to install LogMeIn properly.

• Connect to a machine on the network. This should not be the target server we’re trying to install LMI on. It can be a workstation or another server. We’ll call this the host machine.
• RDP to the server you want to add to LogMeIn. We’ll call this the target server.
• Download TightVNC here – www.tightvnc.com
• On the target server, install TightVNC with both the server and viewer components. Make sure you set the passwords during the install process, otherwise it won’t work.

 

 

 

• On the host machine, install the viewer only.
• Once you have the viewer installed on the host, run the viewer client. Choose Listening Mode on the right side.

 

 

• The connection screen will disappear and will minimize to an icon in the system tray.
• On the target server, you should also have an icon in the system tray. Right click and choose Add Listening Viewer
• As a target, enter the host machine’s name or IP address.
• You should now have a window pop-up on the host machine with a view of the Console of the target server.
• You can now login and install LMI.
• After you’re done, close the VNC window. Stop the service on the host machine by right clicking on the icon in the system tray and choosing Close Listening daemon. Uninstall TightVNC from the host machine.
• Next, stop the service on the target server and uninstall TightVNC from that machine as well.