Problem scenario
You want to connect to your Raspberry Pi 3 with a Windows machine (e.g., Windows 7 or Windows 10 laptop). Both are on the same network. You want more than the command line interface. You want a desktop GUI connection beyond just a character prompt. What do you do?
Solution
On the Raspberry Pi do these three steps:
1. Change password for the pi user or create a new user.
2. Find the IP address by using "ifconfig" with no quotes in a command terminal. (Use "ip addr show" if you prefer.)
3. Go to the Raspberry button in the upper left hand corner, go to Preferences -> Raspberry Pi Configuration. For VNC choose "Enabled."
On the Windows workstation, do the following four steps:
4. Download and install VNC Viewer.
5. Open VNC Viewer.
6. Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi and press enter.
7. Enter the username and password and press enter.