Very interesting problem - RDC connects to wrong machine?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard
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Richard

Hi everyone,

Here's a weird problem I'm having with my machine at the
moment. I've been trying to connect to my home PC using a
Remote Desktop Connection.

I have an ADSL connection with a static IP address
assigned to my home network which is behind a NAT
router/ADSL modem. I have redirected the standard RDC port
(3389) to aim at my PC when an incoming connection
arrives. Oh, my PC is running Windows XP Pro.

When I aimed a connection from my work PC to my static IP,
I get a connection without any errors... except one little
thing. It's not my machine that I see?! The connection is
to a Windows 2003 Server on a domain called ELETTRONICA
and NTLANCT, my PC isn't on a domain at all.

I contacted my ISP and they confirm that they see the same
PC when using my IP address - not mine. They think that
its something weird happening inside Windows that's
causing the connection to redirect somehow.

The fact that ELETTRONICA is 'Electronics' in Italian,
makes it all that bit stranger. Is someone spoofing my IP
address or something? I haven't the foggiest what's going
on. Anyone have any ideas?

Cheers,
Richard.
 
You and your ISP's tech support should be running tracert commands to see
what is really happening here.

Tracert is a command-line command.

If both you and your ISP see this strange machine, the problem isn't
Windows, nor is it any addressing mechanism local to your machine--a HOSTS
file, for example.

See if you can get this bumped up a bit in the troubleshooting department at
the ISP--you need better help from them.
 
Okay, now I'm getting somewhere. I turned off my machine
and unplugged my ADSL router so that there is nothing
listening at all on my IP address. After attempting to
connect this morning, the connection is refused.

I guess that only leaves the ADSL router and my Windows
box at fault here, but I'm still mystified how either of
those would be redirection incoming connections on port
3389 to an entirely different machine? Behind the router,
my home PC has a 192.168.0.xxx address because of the NAT
and I've set the port redirection to that machine. Ergo,
any machine trying to connect to my IP should fall through
the NAT to my Windows XP Pro machine.

I suppose the next thing to do is turn the router back on
but leave my PC off. If I get redirected, I know it's
something to do with the router.

The traceroute seems to make sense. The route migrates
from my work network through an intermediary ISP then ends
up on a DNS resembling my home ISP before ending when it
gets to my machine, which is currently turned off so
there's no reply. I'll have to try this again once I
turned some things back on.

Cheers for your help!
Richard.
 
Okay, now I'm getting somewhere. I turned off my machine
and unplugged my ADSL router so that there is nothing
listening at all on my IP address. After attempting to
connect this morning, the connection is refused.

I guess that only leaves the ADSL router and my Windows
box at fault here, but I'm still mystified how either of
those would be redirection incoming connections on port
3389 to an entirely different machine? Behind the router,
my home PC has a 192.168.0.xxx address because of the NAT
and I've set the port redirection to that machine. Ergo,
any machine trying to connect to my IP should fall through
the NAT to my Windows XP Pro machine.

I suppose the next thing to do is turn the router back on
but leave my PC off. If I get redirected, I know it's
something to do with the router.

The traceroute seems to make sense. The route migrates
from my work network through an intermediary ISP then ends
up on a DNS resembling my home ISP before ending when it
gets to my machine, which is currently turned off so
there's no reply. I'll have to try this again once I
turned some things back on.

Cheers for your help!
Richard.
 
The router being at fault makes perfect sense. It won't be redirecting
pings, so tracert probably won't help. Consider setting the thing back to
factory defaults, maybe upgrading to newest firmware, and putting the
forwarding back in and seeing if that fixes it.
 
Did you double check that the ip address of the forwarding is infact
192.168.x.x?? One number off and you could be going to a public ip somewhere
in the cloud.
 
Disregard that..... the router isn't gonna route to the wan side unless you
have a static route built and its set as a router instead of a gateway....
not sure what it could be but gotta try something..plug the router in and
give it a go!
 
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