How to change the Remote Desktop Port¶

The Remote Desktop port may be changed for security reasons. If you look in the Security log in Event Viewer, you may notice events with ID 4625. These are created when there are failed logins for a generic username, such as Administrator. If you notice a large volume of these entries in the Security log, this may be indicative of a brute force attack to the Remote Desktop service on your server.

One of the ways to mitigate this is to change the listening port from the default port of 3389/tcp

In order to change the RDP port, you will first need to access the Registry Editor. Please select Start, and type regedit, select the regedit application from the list, as below

You will now be presented with the Registry Editor as below. Navigate through the hive until you reach this path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp

Now select the RDP-Tcp node, and you will see a number of registry keys in the centre field. Scroll through these keys until you find PortNumber. Right click the PortNumber key, and select Modify. You will now be presented with the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog, as below

Select the radio button next to Decimal in the base section, then in the Value Data field, enter the new port which you would like to use for Remote Desktop Services. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.

Now that you have changed the RDP port, you will need to reset the Remote Desktop Services service. To do that, follow the steps below:

Open Server Manager. This can be done by either selecting the Server Manager icon on the Taskbar, or by selecting Start, and selecting Server Manager from the list of available applications.

Select Tools, then select Computer Management, as below

You will now be presented with the Computer Management console, select Services and Applications and then select the Services option. The centre view will now be populated with the services which run on your server. Scroll down the list and select Remote Desktop Services, as below

Right click on Remote Desktop Services and select Restart from the context menu

At this point all Remote Desktop sessions to the server will be terminated while the service restarts. Once the service has finished restarting, you will be able to form your new connection by adding the new port number to the connection string, as demonstrated below

If you have followed all of the above steps correctly, you should now be logged back in to your server. If you are experiencing trouble connecting to your server after this point, please confirm that you have allowed the new port in your firewall configuration. If you are still not able to connect, raise a PSS ticket with UKFast Support to have the issue investigated.