Strange Remote Assistance Behaviour

[Dany]

I have realy read trough all possible posts in Newsgroups and
Helpcenters. But something similar to my issue I coudn't find. Let me
explain what my issue is.

Coroporate Enterprise Environment:
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All Clients running Windows XP Pro SP1
I enable on a few clients the ability to use Remote Desktop and Remote
Assistance. I did eleminate the issue with the SessMgr which did
prevent me to make an offer of Remote Assistance. I am able to
conntect to all clients using Remote Desktop. No issue within Remote
Desktop. I did check all registry settings and User Rights etc. No I
try to send an offer of Remote Assistance to one client. Or I try to
use a file to connect to the computer. All computers are using the
same domain and are in the same network. As far as I know all
components are running as thy should.

Now the behaviour of the Remote Assistance feature makes me going
cracy. If I send an offer of remote assistance using the Help and
Support Center, or I get from a specified client the created file by
mail and I excute the request for help and try to assist, the console
is never starting the Remote Assistance Process which I was able to
see once on a different network. The only thing happend is, it is
starting a automatically a Remote Desktop Session. All features
brought by Remote Assistance are just not recognized. The user never
gets a pop up and my display is never swiching to the take control
overview. It is just taking the desktop over and logs the user out as
Remote Desktop is ment to do it. I realy tryed to find out what I did
configure wrong or what else I missed. But I can't find it and need
your advice.

I appreciate your time and help.
Regards,
Dany

 

[Dany]

I found the solution by driving me nuts !
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For everyone to enable Remote Assistance on Windows XP.

Prerequisites:
1. You have to be in the same Domain or a trusted one.
2. Within Registry you have to add the following values:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
Add this key: AllowTSConnections - (DWORD)Value set to: 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Add this key: DontDisplayLastUserName - (DWORD)Value set to: 0

3. The Help and Support service is used for Remote Access within XP.
So you might experience that you get strance messages traying to connect
to a system. Make sure that this service is starting even manually without
an error. Errors would be displayed within EventLog and look like this:

The Remote Desktop Help session manager did not start properly (error code
0x80070002). Remote Assistance will be disabled. Restart the computer in
safe mode and type the following text at the command prompt:
sessmgr.exe -service. If the problem persists, contact Microsoft Product
Support.

4. To solve the issue follow the instructions within EvenLog and open a
command prompt. Type the following: sessmgr -service
Press enter to execute the command.

5. If not allready have enabled the Remote Desktop / Remote Assistance within
your system proberty tab, then configure the following.

- Go to Control Panel
- Double Click "System" icon
- Select the "Remote" tab
- Enable and configure both sections (Allow Remote Assistance/Desktop)

6. If you are using Group Policies, which is very commen if you work in
Enterprise Envirionments, than you will have to configure 2 entries
within the Machine Policy. Follow the instructions below:

- Start the Policy editior: Start -> Run - > gpedit.msc
- Browse: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System ->
Remote Assistance
- Configure the two available options as you wish:
Enable -> Solicited Remote Assistance
Enalbe -> Offer Remote Assistance

7. Now are mostly done. It is possible that you like to allow just certain
users to access and use Remote Assitance. So you are able to configer a
user Builtin/UserGroup on each client.

- Got to Control Panel
- Double click "User Accounts" icon
- Select "Advanced" tab
- Click on button "Advanced" within section Advance user management
- Open the Groups folder
- Double Click the Group "Remote Desktop Users"

Add here within this group the users or user groups which should be able
to connect remotely.

8. The last thing you have to to is to repeate this steps for each machine
within your environment.

9. Reboot the clients so they can start all services again.

Cheers Dany