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By default, Vista installs without telnet available. I know, I know, you should be using SSH for everything now, but sometimes you just need good old telnet. Here is how to enable telnet in Vista:
1. Open ‘Control Panel’
2. Select ‘Programs and Features’
3. In the left column, select ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ (get ready for the annoying UAC prompt)
4. Check the box next to telnet (and any other obscure services you may want enabled), and wait while Vista thinks for a while.
Thats it, now you can administer your network devices in as unsecure manner as possible!
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This post was written by:
cavtroop - who has written 56 posts on ArsGeek.
Cavtroop is a Senior Editor for Arsgeek.com He works for a fairly large software company that you've all heard of, managing networks, systems, and seemingly lots of cranky people. His role at Arsgeek is to be an advocate for change, a catalyst for socioeconomic...nah, too lofty. He's more interesting in chipping in with (not so) relevant news and insights into things that interest him - role playing games, computers, technology, etc.
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July 10th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Hey, I just got this new computer today with Win Vista and I could not telnet with it. I really appreciate that you took the time to explain how to enable the telnet feature on Vista. THANK YOU so much, you guys are fabulous. I followed your instructions and enabled telnet.
Now, to find telnet on here and use it, like I always did on my old computer.
Bless your hearts and everything else. You have saved the day and have helped me more than you can imagine.
Who ever figured this out is a genius. I am ever so grateful and am indebted to you for this help.
Once again, Thank You so very much.
With hopes for your good health, good fortune and happiness.
July 10th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Laura
Glad we could help!
August 14th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
One great replacement for MS telnet is AbsoluteTelnet from Celestial Software.
It supports telnet, ssh, serial, dialup, plus plenty of emulation options.
http://www.celestialsoftware.net
Brian
March 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Hi, I’ve read your article and I’ve done exactly that in Vista. But I still can’t use telnet. So I looked around for help and I found out that telnet is disabled in Administrative Tools->Services. So if I enabled it it should work, but it wont let me enable it as the button is grayed out. Can you please help me? You may use the email I’ve provided to contact me.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:39 am
i did enable the telent services from the control panel and now when i telnet from cmd to solaris it give a another error msg
( could not open connection to host on port 23: connection failed )
June 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Yeah im confused ive even tryed to telnet my IP and i get a “Press any key to continue” and when I do, it says connection to host failed, what do I do?
September 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for writing procedure to enable the telnet……..This site really doing good job to all
September 24th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Sometimes in Vista when you are running CMD you will need to right click on the CMD icon and select on ‘run as administrator’. For some reason Vista runs things on the lowest permissions level possible and this disqualifies you from some things. So remember: ‘run as administrator’
October 13th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Cheers !! Mate was of great help
October 16th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
hey thanks mate its really great help, i was tired to make it up abuout the telnet but now its simply working great idea .
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
November 7th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
What about after you do this and they won’t open from a browser like in this site:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Catalogs/telnet_problems.html
I tried the third option on that and it’s still not working for me. I can telnet fine if I open a command prompt, type in the address and go. But I should be able to click on a telnet link and it do all that for me.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:19 am
ive tried all the stuff here and still cant telnet, all i get is the following mesage {could not open connection to host on port 23: connection failed )is there any other way of enabling telnet
December 4th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
After I clicked on the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ link, the window that popped up did not show any features even if I’m administrator of my computer. Any ideas? thanks!
January 20th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Ok when i have telnet open it connects but i cannot see anything. When i type anything in it doesnt display anything. What do i do.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Thanx a lot man,,
it was really needed……..
May 11th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Thanks a lot for posting this. Its been so useful.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Thanks very much for that…
July 28th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Appreciate it! Works Great Thank you very much
September 11th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Thanks much. I really appreciate your answer because it gave me the required solution.
Cheers!!!
December 25th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Hey your the best dude
December 30th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Hi.thanks bro , thanks.
kirom men kose deit.
best wishes
January 20th, 2010 at 9:43 am
How do you open up a port such as 995 or 587 when you are in a public place to allow your gmail emails to be delivered to outlook or you to be able to send outgoing emails through outlook