You receive the following message when attempting to establish a connection to a Windows computer using Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac:

Connection refused

There are several possibilities. Among them:

• The computer name you specified may not be valid.
• The remote computer may be in sleep mode or hibernate mode.
• A connection could not be established with the remote computer because of network issues.

Make sure you specified the remote computer name correctly and that the remote computer is not in sleep or hibernation mode. You may also try pinging the remote host to see if it is accessible from your network location.