Remote Desktop Connection problems

New thread. I did not want to clutter up the one I was in any more after being advised it was borderline hijack. My apologies. Problem I am facing seems simple to me, but apparently is not:

I run a research facility at a university. I have 2 computers, 1 LAB desktop that has no ethernet connection to anything at all, besides the experimental instruments it is running, and one OFFICE laptop that is brand new (less than 1 week old and has nothing on it except Spotify for music). The laptop is my primary machine, and I want to be able to dump documents, Excel sheets and raw data files from the Lab computer onto my laptop in my office without connecting across networks under University control. Lab computer has 2 hardline network adapters and a USB wireless adapter that I just installed today. I am not interested in getting my lab computer on the internet whatsoever.

Jimbo suggested RDC because I do not need anything special or even . I cannot seem to make it work, probably because I am very rusty with Windows. Laptop has Win10 home edition and Lab computer has Win7 professional.

Can also set up a hosted network on my lab computer, not on my laptop because it does not support it for some reason.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as this is driving me nuts!

Kari

Thank you very very much for the time and effort you took to answer! The steps were very easy to follow! However--I have still have a problem. I did as you suggested, no errors occurred upon validation. My computer can connect to the University wireless network, and can see all the other computers on the network in my corner of the building....EXCEPT my laptop.

Likewise my laptop can see all the same computers except my lab desktop.

Also, under system properties > remote settings > Remote Desktop > Select Users.... I click to select and add a user, but all I see is my desktop. I do not see any network locations. Having never used RDC before maybe I am making a rookie mistake, but I am a fast learner. I do not know why that should be happening here.

Also, in order to access the university wireless network I needed to authenticate my identity. I only have the one account name and password, so I used it (University netID). I am also logged in on my desktop to the same Wireless network with the same netID, so I wonder if that could be screwing things up? I am still able to cruise the internet on the laptop, as I am currently writing you from there.

Apologies for the late response, my birthday was last week and I took an extended time off work. Any ideas?

Ok, not sure what happened, but after messing around a while I have gotten my lab desktop to show up and I can access the files! Thank you very very much! I can access from RDC and also now it shows up in the network places, so I don't have to do RDC at all. That is exactly what I wanted.

Only downside is although I managed to tweak what needed to be tweaked I don't remember what it is...so if things go SOL I won't know what to do hahaha. Thank you very much again