Remote Assistance: Works with e-mail, fails with Messenger

M

Mike

I am trying to help my older parents with Remote Assistance. They have
MCI DSL, I have Earthlink DSL. For simplicity, I am trying to get my
parents (Novice computer) to invite me through Windows Messenger, since
it only takes a few clicks. Unfortunately, that fails. I receive the
invitation, and they see notification that I have accepted the
invitation, but it ends there. I never gain control. I have resorted
to walking them through saving an invitation to file and e-mailing it to
me. That works fine.

What gives? Why does an e-mail invitation work and a Messenger
invitation doesn't?

If you comprehend the difficulty in walking a nearly deaf, 80-year-old
through manual file attachment process over the phone, you will
understand my desire to get the Messenger option working.

I am behind a Linksys router with UPnP enabled. They have only a DSL
modem. I tried removing my Linksys router but that had no effect.
Also, when I brought their computer to my house and had it on my home
network, the Windows Messenger invitation DID work.

Thanks for your help.
 
G

Guest

Call the ISP for your parents and ask what security measures they have setup
that would prevent access.

You may need to 'open' additional ports to allow this communication.
 
M

Mike

Windows Messenger. I went down that road with MSN Messenger without
really thinking that MSN and Windows Messengers were actually different.
I finally un-installed MSN Messenger and re-installed Windows
Messenger (6.2 I think)
 
M

Mike

Another thought . . . another convenient solution would be to have a
MAPI mail client send me the invitation. This way my parents would not
have to endure the complexities of manually saving and attaching files.
Unfortunately, they use AOL (cough, gag!) which is not MAPI compliant
(so remote assistance can not e-mail the invitation automatically).

Is it possible to configure the Windows XP remote assistance to utilize
a MAPI client (i.e. Thunderbird or Outlook Express) without screwing
anything else up for them?
 
J

Jeffrey Randow (MVP)

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