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Terminal Services and Remote Desktop that are available in versions of Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 are all about accessing your machine remotely via your network connection. Across the room or across the country it's almost like being right there.

Both Terminal Services and Remote Desktop allow you to connect to a Windows machine over a network net and get a full desktop. It's almost like being at the real console. In fact it's so close that it's allowed many people using multiple computers to set some up without any monitor or keyboard installed at all and use remote access only.

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Terminal Services, originally code named "Hydra" after the many-headed beast of Greek mythology, is a technology incorporated into Windows NT servers that allows multiple clients to connect to the machine at the same time. Each connection creates a new "virtual" desktop complete with all the icons and menus that you'd see if you had actually logged on on the machine's console. The only downside is that prior to Windows 2003 Server you could not actually log into the actual console remotely.

Enter Remote Desktop in Windows XP Pro. Remote Desktop uses similar technology to allow you to log into a machine remotely but you can only log into the one true desktop - there is only one session. If you log in remotely using Remote Desktop, then the console session is disconnected. Conversely if you log into the console then any remote session will be disconnected. The good news is that if you log in using the same account applications remain running and you can effectively "move" the console to a remote connection and back again.

Windows 2003 server allows for both types of access: additional sessions and Remote Desktop.

In either case the keys to accessing a machine remotely are:

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The machine you want to connect to must have either Terminal Services or Remote Desktop sharing installed and running.
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The machine you want to connect from must have the Terminal Services or Remote Desktop client installed. The Remote Desktop client is included in Windows XP and can also be downloaded for free here. It can be used to connect to both Terminal Services and Remote Desktop.

When you run Remote Desktop Client you'll specify the name of the machine to connect to and possibly some options controlling the connection. As long as you can "see" the other machine - meaning it's on your local LAN or behind some kind of firewall on the internet then the client connects and you'll be presented with the very familiar logon screen from that machine. Logon and you're there.

Once connected you can do anything remotely that you could if you were sitting at the machine with two very important exceptions:

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If the machine is truly physically remote from you then you will not be able to do things like insert a CD-ROM or other physical things.
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Windows must be running which implies that you cannot remote-desktop to the boot sequence or to change BIOS settings.

As I mentioned earlier, you can happily use remote desktop across the internet as long as the server is not protected by a firewall such as a broadband router. If it is and your firewall or router supports it you can open port 3389 on the firewall and forward that to the machine you want to connect to. Note that if there is more than one machine behind the firewall then only one can be connected to across the firewall this way.

There are lots of tools out there that will allow you to monitor not just who's using your machine, but what they're doing, even typing, when they do. That's called spyware, and requires installing additional software to be installed to log and report the activities.

What many people don't realize is that there are some simple logging tools built into Windows XP already. They won't log keystrokes, but they will at least let you see who's logged into your machine and what programs they ran while they were there.

It's off by default, but it's easy to turn some of that logging on.

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The settings are buried a little deep: Start, All Programs, Accessories, Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy. Once that's opened up, look underneath Security Settings, expand Local Policies by clicking on the boxed plus sign next to it, and then click on Audit Policy.

There are several items of interest here, but we'll focus on only three. Start by double clicking on Audit account login events. Make sure that both success and failure are checked, and press OK. Repeat for Audit logon events. Those two will log when someone logs into your computer or tries to connect to your computer via a remote share. Now repeat the process for Audit process tracking - this one will log an event each time a process (program) starts or stops.

Now close Local Security Settings.

Use the event viewer to see the results of the logging we just enabled.

Press Start, Run, and type "eventvwr". Click on the security item in the left hand pane. In the right will be a list of security events, most recent at the top. Double click on one for the details of that event. In the case of a login event, for example, you'll see the account used as well as the date and time of the event. In the case of a process event, you'll see the name of the program that was run as well as the account that started it.

If you're running Windows XP, 2000, 2003, or NT - Absolutely NOT.

These are required system files. Windows won't run without them

There isn't a lot of free space on my main drive, and I wanted to install software on my PC but it was not installed successfully. However, it got 2GB of the space on that drive, and its not possible to uninstall or remove that program in "add or remove program". How can i remove it?

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It's too bad that the failed install didn't clean up after itself.

A good installer/setup program should do exactly that: if it fails for any reason clean up. That means not taking up 2 gigabytes of space for something that didn't work.

However, you're in that situation, so I'll look at some of the approaches I would take recover that space.

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My first reaction is to use a different tool to uninstall the problematic software. Unfortunately, that tool requires ... installation. I'll assume that things are tight enough such that we'll start by simply freeing up some "elbow room" on your machine.
"... I'm going to focus on the problem at hand: disk space."
Making Some Room to Work

I would do two things to clear up what could be a lot of space on your machine quickly:

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Clear your browser cache. That's covered in this article: What's a browser cache, how do I "clear" it, and why would I want to? For the cost of a little performance the next time you use your browser, you may find that you've recovered a lot of disk space quickly. Of course that space will slowly disappear as your browser cache fills up again with use.
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Delete temporary files. That's covered in this article: Can I delete the contents of my TMP folder? This has almost no performance cost, and depending on what's been accumulating over time can also clear up a lot of space quickly. Heck, it's possible that the 2GB "used" by your failed install are here, and doing this will recover that.

While the second could possibly actually resolve the issue, it certainly doesn't cover all cases, so we'll assume it didn't.

The goal here was simply to quickly free up some room on your hard disk so that we can install another application.
Revo

My go-to tool of choice for failed installs - or rather for failed uninstalls - is Revo Uninstaller. The free version is all you need (though I elected to support their efforts by purchasing a copy).

Revo will first attempt to run the "normal" uninstall tool for the application if it exists, but then will take additional steps to remove "leftovers" from the registry and elsewhere on the machine.

Revo may well help locate and truly uninstall the failed install you're currently stuck with.

Naturally, of course, it may fail to find anything, depending on exactly how your problematic uninstall failed.
Manual Removal

This gets ... trickier.

I want to be clear that I'm not going to recommend a "manual uninstall", removing all traces of the failed install. That's difficult at best to do, simply because we really have no idea where things might be have been placed.

Rather, I'm going to focus on the problem at hand: disk space.

A program that when installed takes up 2 gigabytes may well be easy to spot, simply based on disk usage.

Where's my disk space going? outlines use of a utility to see what's taking up space on your machine. By examining the relative size of folders - most likely starting with the folders within "C:\Program Files" and/or "C:\Program Files(x86)", you may be able to quickly locate the application by name and find that it is, indeed, using 2 gigabytes in its failed installation.

The initial solution: rename the offending folder and reboot.

I do this first instead of immediately deleting simply to quickly determine if deleting the files would cause a problem of some sort. If the reboot proceeds without error, I'd delete (or perhaps backup and delete, just in case) the folder or files that are associated with the application and are taking up so much space.

If there is an issue after reboot, then I'd investigate that before proceeding. More than likely it is an auto-start entry referencing the partially installed program, which you'll want to remove before proceeding.

While you're at it, looking around at what's taking up space, you might just see if the bigger offenders are actually needed. I'm not saying delete things recklessly, but while you're looking it might be worth checking and considering if additional things need to be uninstalled or moved.