Connecting via Remote Desktop to machine with Public network location?

Question

I have two Windows 7 computers connected on the same network via a switch. I'll call one "local" and the other "remote".

When I connected the remote computer to my network I chose the network location as Public (I'd prefer to have the remote computer's network location as public so it's not so visible on the network). However, on the local computer I could not connect via Remote Desktop to the remote computer. Changing the remote computer's network location to Home allowed me to connect via RDP.

1. Why does this happen?
2. Is there a way I can connect via remote desktop to a machine that has a Public network location? Is this just a firewall change?

Answer 1

Finally got this working correctly. With my both machines connected via my LAN I still could not connect via Remote Desktop with the Network Location set to Public nor could I ping the other computer. This was despite the fact that remote desktop access was enabled in the firewall.

However from within Windows Firewall -> Advanced Settings -> Inbound Rules I enabled the following settings:

File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)
File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv6-In)
File and Printer Sharing (NB-Name-In)

for both Private and Domain profiles. The ICMP change enabled ping and the NB-Name-In (NetBios) change enabled connecting via remote desktop via the computername (i.e. via Netbios name resolution).

As far as I can tell my computer is still not visible from other computers on the LAN when browsing the network via Windows explorer which the behavior I wanted.