How to: Find previous remote desktop protocol (RDP) addresses (history) via regedit

Often times I will not use third party Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) apps (like Terminals or Remote Desktop Manager) when working on a computer that is not my own or a loner or something. I'll use the Windows RDP client instead (mstsc.exe). What sucks is sometimes I'll need to go back to a previous IP address but didn't save a link to it somewhere and it doesn't appear in the dropdown. 

 

Thankfully, there is a way to look up previous IP addresses via the Windows registry. It's easy. Just do the below.

1. Navigate to the windows run prompt (In Windows 8, press 'Windows button + R')
2. type 'regedit' -> click OK (Figure 1)
3. Navigate to '\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\'
4. From here there are two options you can select
1. 'Default' (Figure 2) - Under this folder, you will see the IPs that are available in the RDP dropdown (Figure 3)
2. 'Servers' (Figure 4) - This will have a list of all of the servers that the user connected to via the RDP.

Ultimately, you can find the history by just going to the 'Servers' folder and finding the IP/server name as the registry's folder name and the settings used inside that folder.  

 

 

Figure 1 - Getting to the registry via Windows Run 'regedit'

 

Figure 2 - The 'Default' folder with the RDP defaults

 

Figure 3 - The default ip addresses in the RDP program (correlating to the 'Default' regedit folder)

Figure 4 - The 'Servers' folder with the RDP history