said by army dude :

Yes, that should work.

said by army dude :

Okay, I see what you want to do. And, I don't know how you had it set up before, because the situation you describe sounds normal to me.

When you use remote desktop in administrative mode, it is normal for the screen to lock on the "controlled" computer, and only output the display to the "controlling" computer.

When I say the screen is "locked", this is on machines using the classic logon, it shows a message "this machine is locked, blah blah blah". I imagine if you were using the newer XP style logon, then a locked machine probably goes to the logon screen while it is being 'remoted'.

You may want to visit the networking forum, and inquire about UltraVNC. I'm sure there are versions that allow both ends to view the screen during a remote session.

EDIT: I asked about Pro or Home, because Home doesn't have the capability to be remoted with RDP. But, if that was the case, you would probably get an error message when you tried, rather than seeing a "logon screen".

said by army dude :

This laptop that replaced the desktop...is it running XP Pro or XP Home?