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Enable telnet in Windows Vista

Tue, Mar 20, 2007

Microsoft, Quicktips, Windows

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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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14 Comments For This Post

  1. Laura Miller-Musselman Says:

    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.

  2. cavtroop Says:

    Laura

    Glad we could help!

  3. Brian Says:

    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

  4. Ashok Says:

    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.

  5. Kaz9845 Says:

    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 )

  6. xbmxkush Says:

    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?

  7. MALLI Says:

    Thanks for writing procedure to enable the telnet……..This site really doing good job to all

  8. Killian Says:

    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’

  9. sumit Says:

    Cheers !! Mate was of great help

  10. Miken Gole Says:

    hey thanks mate its really great help, i was tired to make it up abuout the telnet but now its simply working great idea .

  11. Bruce Says:

  12. Michael Says:

    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.

  13. sam Says:

    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

  14. neeniya Says:

    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!

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