Download PuTTY

As of 11/6/2012, PuTTY can be downloaded from: PuTTY Download Page

Putty doesn't have an installer, so save it somewhere you can find it and it won't get deleted.

Configuring PuTTY for X11 Tunneling

  1.  Start PuTTY and you should see the config screen
  2. Expand the SSH section of the left menu and select X11
  3. Check off Enable X11 forwarding
  4. Click back to Session in the left menu and click on Default Settings then Save
  5. Type in the host name you want to connect to
  6. Optionally fill in the "Saved Settings" box and then click save to save it in the list to connect to later
  7. Now click Open, if you get a message about the host key, press Yes (there are times you may not want to press yes, but that is beyond the scope of this document)
  8. Login to the system and type "echo $DISPLAY" to verify your tunneling is enabled.   You should see something like localhost:20.0, the imporant part is the localhost and the number after, it should be anything except 0.   If DISPLAY returns nothing, you've done something wrong, start again.
  9. You may now run any command that will display back to your system, try xterm to begin with.