If you are like me, you may have several computers in your house. With the Windows Pro versions, Microsoft created a remote-control protocol, called Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), to help manage these machines remotely, even without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse connected. Whether you have a computer serving content from Plex or a dedicated server for Hyper-V virtual machines, there may come a time where you need to access the optical drives of these remote PCs over RDP. By default, this is not allowed, but there are some steps we can do to enable these features.
From the computer you want to enable the remote optical drive access on use the following steps
- Click Start and type “GPEDIT.MSC”
- Right-click “gpedit.msc” and choose “Run as Administrator”
- If prompted by UAC select “Yes”
- The Local Group Policy editor is now open.
- Drill down to Computer Configuration/Administrative templates/System/Removable Storage Access
- Locate the setting called “All Removable Storage: Allow direct access in remote settings.”
- Right-click and choose Edit
- On the configuration screen Choose Enable and then click OK to apply and close the dialog box
- You should now be able to access your optical drives and any other removable media through Remote Desktop Protocol.
What ways does enabling this feature help you out? Does it make you more productive? Let us know in the comments.
