How to use Remote Desktop

Hey everyone. I had a quick question about Remote Desktop. I am trying to figure out how to access my computer from other places. I followed tutorials and enabled it and even opened up port 3389 which Remote Desktop uses to talk. I don't understand why it doesn't work. Do I have to do something special to make it work? When you open Remote Desktop, you have several fields to fill out. Where is says "computer", i put my external ip address that my service provider gave me. When it says "username", i put my user for my computer and password. Do I have to set up something special to make it work? I tried to connect from my buddies house and it just timed out. Any help would be awesome.

Make sure you are running XP Pro. Under System Properties - Remote Tab, make sure that Allow users to Remote to this machine is checked.
Since you have setup your route to forward ports to your local ip, check your firewall settings. If you are using the windows firewall, there is a default Remote desktop exception. If all that is correct, I would go back to your router. Sometimes setting up port forwarding can be tricky.

RDC

I did all that...i'm going to try tommorow and see if i can connect when i go over to my buddy's house again. I also heard you have to right click the network connection that you are using to connect to the internet and right click properties. Then click on the tab advanced and then settings. Then click advanced on the Windows firewall and click on your LAN connection. Then click settings and click remote desktop. I did that so hopefully it will work now..Thanks for the help!