I have a bit of a strange problem, magnified recently by my broadband dropouts. I wasn't sure whether to post this on SU or SF, so I thought I'd start here as more users would be likely to know what the problem is.

In short, when I try and connect to my server (Windows Server 2008) from my laptop running Windows 7, I can only connect if my remote account was previously logged out. If I'm still logged in I get the error message:

Windows cannot connect to the remote server.

No explanation or anything. If my IP address is the same, I don't have this problem. If I boot up Windows XP Mode and run XP's remote desktop connection it works just fine -- I think the difference there is it takes me to the remote server's logon screen. With Win 7 RDC you never see the logon screen, it asks you for credentials before entering full screen mode.

The real problem is that I'm having random broadband dropouts and my IP isn't static. If I logon via Win XP RDC, log out and then run Win 7 RDC then it works fine. I realize I can just use Win XP's RDC for now, but I don't really like keeping XP Mode open if I can help it.

Does anyone know a way around this problem? Maybe forcing Win 7 RDC to go to the logon screen, or changing some server-side settings to work around the IP address issue?