Do you use Telnet? If so, you’ll obviously need a Telnet client for Vista, but which one should you choose? The good news is that Vista has its own Telnet client, it’s sitting on your hard drive, it’s just not installed by default. So how do you get it installed? Erickr pointed out how to do this on his blog, here’s a pictorial version:
- Open the Start menu and select the Control Panel.
- Click on Programs.
- Select Turn Windows features on or off (if you have UAC turned on you’ll need to give permission to continue).
- After a bit, you’ll see a list of available features. Scroll down until you see Telnet Client, check it’s box, and click OK
- The window that pops up next isn’t kidding, you’ll need to wait several minutes for the install.
- If all goes well, the progress window will just disappear, and the program will now be installed. On one of my machines, it didn’t work (even a second attempt failed), and I got the following error:
- If your install worked, just start Telnet by clicking on the Start menu, type
telnet, and press Enter

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Comments
Richard
Apr 26, 2007 at 11:33 am
I tried this and got no error, but when I type Telnet in search Vista finds nothing (so I cannot execute the program, at least not this way). Thx
Joe
Apr 26, 2007 at 3:17 pm
If you just installed it, perhaps it just hasn’t been indexed yet. Check C:\windows\system32\ to see if telnet.exe exists, that will let you know for sure if the installation worked.
Armend
Apr 30, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I’m getting the error, how do i fix it?
Joe
Apr 30, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I just tried installing on two of my setups here and it installed fine (I don’t have the one I used initially that gave me the error) so I can’t troubleshoot what could be causing it. Guess I should have thought to do that when I first encountered the error. I’ll try on a couple more setups at work tomorrow and see if I get lucky/unlucky so I can try a few things to maybe resolve the error.
Joe
May 1, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I’ve installed it successfully on four different machines now, haven’t had the same error again. I did find someone else who had the same error, try what they suggest at this page:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=304519#304519
Let us know if it works or not!
Armend
May 1, 2007 at 1:59 pm
The funny thing is… i made that topic on that forum! And so far nothing is helping.
Armend
May 3, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Fixed the problem, apparently the Telnet in Vista sucks and it’s better to just download a better one like Putty. So yay!=D
Some Dude
Jun 4, 2007 at 11:54 am
I find two things after I add telnet. I find the Telnet program and Telnet.exe file. When I launch Telnet program it comes up for a half-second then closes. Run as administrator, same thing happens. Does anyone know how to fix this?
Brian
Aug 14, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Don’t install MS telnet, replace it! 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
Rose
May 17, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Here’s my problem… I’m using telnet to connect to a bbs, but unless I have constant input on the screen for at least 10 minutes, it disconnects me, but still logged into the bbs. This is both with Vista’s telnet and with ZOC. Any ideas?
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