B
Bill Sanderson
My father, who lives about 90 miles away, bought a new computer--his first.
He initially had a good deal of trouble getting the modem to acknowledge
dial tone, resulting in letters to Carly Fiorino and various lower level
technical support staff. That problem seems to have been resolved, and he
asked me whether he should renew the trial antivirus which came on the
machine.
I decided this was a good time to try out Remote Assistance, so I had him
save the invitation as a file, and email it to me via his hotmail account.
First try I couldn't get the password to work. Retried without a password.
That worked fine, and I got connected, and was allowed control. This was
around 11 or so at night. I told him to go ahead and go to bed and I'd take
it from there. Unfortunately, a couple of different issues resulted in my
dropping control of the machine and needing him to allow it again, but
finally I got to work in earnest. I moved a bunch of useless desktop icons,
and uninstalled some stuff that HP puts on all the machines. I downloaded
Microsoft Antispyware and set it up and did a scan. I downloaded AVG's
version 7 freeware antivirus to use in April when the trial stuff that came
with the machine expires.
I generally cleaned things up a bit and created a shortcut or two. All went
well until about 1:15 in the morning when I thought I would do a quick run
througn WindowsUpdate, and then shut the machine down. Well--WindowsUpdate
offered nothing critical (good job dad!) 4 optional items, which I put in,
and two device drivers--nic and modem.
I thought "hmm..." since without exception every nic driver install via
WindowsUpdate I've seen blows away connectivity over the nic
temporarily--but I decided to do it.
Sure enough, when it got to the modem driver install, it dropped the
connection.
(sawing off limb you are standing on, etc....)
I heard back in the morning that it had completed the driver installs fine,
and that the machine was working better.
So--working remotely from a DSL connected machine to one connected via
modem--possible, slow, but not disastrously so.
Today, I heard from a colleague with a laptop in Iowa. (I'm on the east
coast.) She was having a number of problems which I was reasonably sure
were ascribable to a famous-name Internet Security 2005 application which
wasn't installed quite right. After about 15 minutes of fooling around with
router and firewall settings, we discovered that the router had dropped the
connection and the IP changed. Once we figure that out, I got a good Remote
Desktop connection, and proceeded to work on the machine for a solid 4
hours, including at least half a dozen reboots. I ununstalled the security
app, verified that the machine seemed responsive and properly
behaved--checked for viruses, spyware, and rootkits (via F-secures trial
FSBL.EXE) updated SpywareBlaster to the new version, updated and scanned
with ad-aware, etc, etc, etc. Machine seemed squeaky clean, and responded
properly. So--I then put the Internet Security app back. 4 reboots and a
gazillion liveupdates later, it was working fine.
I was impressed as always at the rock solid connection I was able to make--I
rebooted this machine at least 6 times, and updated a huge amount of
software--and did it all with no help from the owner of the machine except
to obtain the IP address to get started. In the end, we fixed an issue that
had left her without email for many weeks, and cost hours of time trying to
follow the instructions of the tech support staff for that yellow-box
product company.
So--score two for working_remotely! I for one am incredibly glad this
facility is included in the product, and not a $200 extra as it is in the
Macintosh platform.
--
He initially had a good deal of trouble getting the modem to acknowledge
dial tone, resulting in letters to Carly Fiorino and various lower level
technical support staff. That problem seems to have been resolved, and he
asked me whether he should renew the trial antivirus which came on the
machine.
I decided this was a good time to try out Remote Assistance, so I had him
save the invitation as a file, and email it to me via his hotmail account.
First try I couldn't get the password to work. Retried without a password.
That worked fine, and I got connected, and was allowed control. This was
around 11 or so at night. I told him to go ahead and go to bed and I'd take
it from there. Unfortunately, a couple of different issues resulted in my
dropping control of the machine and needing him to allow it again, but
finally I got to work in earnest. I moved a bunch of useless desktop icons,
and uninstalled some stuff that HP puts on all the machines. I downloaded
Microsoft Antispyware and set it up and did a scan. I downloaded AVG's
version 7 freeware antivirus to use in April when the trial stuff that came
with the machine expires.
I generally cleaned things up a bit and created a shortcut or two. All went
well until about 1:15 in the morning when I thought I would do a quick run
througn WindowsUpdate, and then shut the machine down. Well--WindowsUpdate
offered nothing critical (good job dad!) 4 optional items, which I put in,
and two device drivers--nic and modem.
I thought "hmm..." since without exception every nic driver install via
WindowsUpdate I've seen blows away connectivity over the nic
temporarily--but I decided to do it.
Sure enough, when it got to the modem driver install, it dropped the
connection.
(sawing off limb you are standing on, etc....)
I heard back in the morning that it had completed the driver installs fine,
and that the machine was working better.
So--working remotely from a DSL connected machine to one connected via
modem--possible, slow, but not disastrously so.
Today, I heard from a colleague with a laptop in Iowa. (I'm on the east
coast.) She was having a number of problems which I was reasonably sure
were ascribable to a famous-name Internet Security 2005 application which
wasn't installed quite right. After about 15 minutes of fooling around with
router and firewall settings, we discovered that the router had dropped the
connection and the IP changed. Once we figure that out, I got a good Remote
Desktop connection, and proceeded to work on the machine for a solid 4
hours, including at least half a dozen reboots. I ununstalled the security
app, verified that the machine seemed responsive and properly
behaved--checked for viruses, spyware, and rootkits (via F-secures trial
FSBL.EXE) updated SpywareBlaster to the new version, updated and scanned
with ad-aware, etc, etc, etc. Machine seemed squeaky clean, and responded
properly. So--I then put the Internet Security app back. 4 reboots and a
gazillion liveupdates later, it was working fine.
I was impressed as always at the rock solid connection I was able to make--I
rebooted this machine at least 6 times, and updated a huge amount of
software--and did it all with no help from the owner of the machine except
to obtain the IP address to get started. In the end, we fixed an issue that
had left her without email for many weeks, and cost hours of time trying to
follow the instructions of the tech support staff for that yellow-box
product company.
So--score two for working_remotely! I for one am incredibly glad this
facility is included in the product, and not a $200 extra as it is in the
Macintosh platform.
--
