Sometimes its not practical to have a monitor and keyboard attached to your Raspberry PI.

This is a quick guide to setting up your PI to allow windows to use Remote Desktop to connect to your PI

This guide is the result of the Bloominglabs Raspberry Pi and Adafruit Build Nights.

Step 1: What Is Needed:

A Raspberry Pi (any version should work)

Ethernet cable or WIFI adapter to connect to your network

Keyboard, Video Monitor, and Mouse to setup the software

A computer running Windows used to connect to your Raspberry Pi

Step 2: Installing XRDP Server

Open LXTerminal.

enter "sudo apt-get update" to get the most current list of packages

enter "sudo apt-get install xrdp" to install the server

enter "sudo reboot" to restart your system

XRDP will now automatically run whenever your Raspberry Pi is running.

Open LXterminal on your Raspberry Pi

Type "ifconfig"

The green line shows where to find your IP address. Write this down and save it for later.

(The red line is to hide the MAC address on the Pi I was using for the demo)

In Windows, open the Remote Desktop Client.

You will find it under:

Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Remote Desktop Connection.

Enter the IP address from the previous step.

Enter your username and password as you normally would.

After a brief loading window, you will have your Raspberry Pi desktop just as if you were in front of it with a monitor and keyboard.