Remote Assistance Vista to XP

[Super1]

Remote assistance is the tool that my helpdesk lives by. We can't have all
our users on Vista for several years, that said.


Why can't I offer remote assistance from Vista to XP computers like I can XP
to XP? The session things it is connected but you can't see anything.
Quote from the help on Vista, "You cannot offer Windows Remote Assistance
from later versions of Windows to either Windows XP or Windows Server 2003."

So how am I supposed to offer assistance to all my XP users? Make them
solicit me? Hah, you don't know my users do you?

 

[Marky P]

Dual boot with XP?

Regards,
Mark

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Not in a production environment.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Without hiding the Vista volume from XP with a third party boot manager, the
XP VSS driver will remove Vista VSS files when you boot into XP.
Volsnap.sys enumerates all VSS files system wide. It will determine that
the Vista VSS files are corrupt and delete them to protect the user from
attempting to restore from a corrupt file. This means that all of the Vista
system restore points, previous versions of files, etc. are lost. A user
can accept this limitation if he wants to but he does so at his own peril
and needs to be aware of the risk.

Microsoft says that the XP and Vista volsnap.sys drivers are incompatible
and although the Vista driver understands XP VSS files, the XP vss driver
does not understand Vista VSS files. It would take an extensive rewrite to
XP to resolve the issue. MS looked at this for almost two years and decided
not to do the rewrite so the issue will not be addressed.

Those with Vista Ultimate can prevent the problem by using BitLocker.

This has been discussed in this newsgroup repeatedly over the past months.
Search on "volsnap.sys" and "vss."

 

[Guest]

Ok so this establishes that it should be supported, but why doesn't it work.

With Vista on my PC I can no longer provide support to several customers via
RA and the Internet.

I upgraded to Vista Business from XP2 SP2 and now when I get invitations
from my customers still on XP I get the invitation via Live Messenger, click
on Accept and nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.

If I try to go the other way and offer RA, Vista claims the remote computer
does not have RA enabled, but I know it does because I set them up and
regularly connected via RA using XP. I can also verify this by connecting
from a laptop that is still running XP.

Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

Suggestions:
1. Verify that you can use RA without Messenger (save RA invitation to a
file on XP, copy file to vista and then launch msra.exe on Vista and use
offer mode and the saved file)
3. This should work. Then make sure both machines are on the latest release
of Live Messenger

 

[Guest]

On the XP machine save the RA invitation to a file, transfer the file to
Vista machine and launch msra.exe. Offer RA from Vista using the saved file
and make sure you can connect to the XP machine successfully.

Verify that both mchines have the latest version of Live Messenger.

 

[Ol' Jedi]

Ok so this establishes that it should be supported, but why doesn't it
work.

With Vista on my PC I can no longer provide support to several customers
via
RA and the Internet.

I upgraded to Vista Business from XP2 SP2 and now when I get invitations
from my customers still on XP I get the invitation via Live Messenger,
click
on Accept and nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.

If I try to go the other way and offer RA, Vista claims the remote
computer
does not have RA enabled, but I know it does because I set them up and
regularly connected via RA using XP. I can also verify this by connecting
from a laptop that is still running XP.

Any ideas?

I found an obscure problem that has been giving me fits, and now all is
working fine. It seems that if only one of the two parties involved are
using a non UPnP compliant NAT in their router--no problem, but if both
users have a non UPnP compliant NAT, then RA will not connect. I added a
new Buffalo brand router to my system today, and disabled the NAT in my
older Motorola Wireless Cable gateway (it is not UPnp). Now everything
works fine. I responded to two requests for RA today from people with XP
and had no issues. I am using Vista x64 Ultimate. It might be worth
checking the status of your NAT. In Live Messenger, under options, the
connection tab will give you information on the connection... Hope this
helps

 

[Guest]

Ok, I use Vista Business with Ultra and I do help others. There are a couple
things you might like to do... 1. Go to Control Panel, User accounts, and
turn off the "turn User Account Control off". Also, go to the Windows
Firewall and Defender and turn them off for your first connection. I get the
VNC Server to work, but not the MSRA.