Offering Remote Assistance

[pjfelton]

I have a brand new laptop with Vista Home Premium, and my daughter who lives
across the country just got her new desktop computer with Vista Ultimate.
She needs LOTS of help, but I have been unable to log into her computer using
Remote Assistance. Using our cell phones I walked her thru the whole
process, but when I accept the invitation and use the password, it tells me:
"Remote Assistance cannot make the connection" (The person you are trying to
help might have closed Remote Assistance) - which she insists she has not. I
sent her an invitation and she was able to remote into my computer.

Question: Is my Vista Home Premium considered a "previous version" and not
compatible with her Ultimate?

Thank you for your help, in advance.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

She is behind some NAT (network address translation ) device, like a router.
If she plugs her system directly into the Internet modem, she will be able
to grant you control. Be sure her windows firewall is on. There are firewall
settings to enable remote assistance.

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Mark L. Ferguson

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[churin]

Remote Assistance feature is supported by all versions of Vista.
My suggestion is let your daughter check Network and Sharing Center and
make sure the network is shown as "Network(Private network)" instead of
"Network(Public network)". If not it needs be set as Private network.

 

[Malke]

I have a brand new laptop with Vista Home Premium, and my daughter who
lives across the country just got her new desktop computer with Vista
Ultimate. She needs LOTS of help, but I have been unable to log into her
computer using
Remote Assistance. Using our cell phones I walked her thru the whole
process, but when I accept the invitation and use the password, it tells
me: "Remote Assistance cannot make the connection" (The person you are
trying to
help might have closed Remote Assistance) - which she insists she has not.
I sent her an invitation and she was able to remote into my computer.

Question: Is my Vista Home Premium considered a "previous version" and
not compatible with her Ultimate?

Compatibility isn't the issue. Routers, firewalls, etc. are the issue. Make
it easy on both you and your daughter and don't bother with the built-in
Remote Assistance. I use Team Viewer (www.teamviewer.com) to help my
brother and other relations and it works perfectly. All the supportee has
to do is double-click on the Team Viewer executable (nothing to install)
and read you, the supporter, two sets of numbers which you plug into the
supporter module and voila! you will then connect and be in control of the
remote desktop. No messing about with static IPs, port forwarding, or any
of that.

I don't want to sound like I work for them because I don't; I've just had a
very nice experience using their software. And best of all, Team Viewer is
free for personal use.

Malke

 

[srodgers]

I have a brand new laptop with Vista Home Premium, and my daughter who lives
across the country just got her new desktop computer with Vista Ultimate.
She needs LOTS of help, but I have been unable to log into her computer using
Remote Assistance. Using our cell phones I walked her thru the whole
process, but when I accept the invitation and use the password, it tellsme:
"Remote Assistance cannot make the connection" (The person you are trying to
help might have closed Remote Assistance) - which she insists she has not. I
sent her an invitation and she was able to remote into my computer.

Question: Is my Vista Home Premium considered a "previous version" and not
compatible with her Ultimate?

Thank you for your help, in advance.

Had similar problems with Fathers computer. He is behind a router and
Remote Assistance file he would send contained his internal NAT
address (192.168.0.101) instead of his public WAN address.

I had him determine his public WAN address using:

www.ipchicken.com or www.whatismyipaddress.com or any of the many
other similar sites.

I opened the Remote Assistance file and changed the two instances of
192.168.0.101 to his public IP and saved. Do not disturb any other
parts of the file. I saved file and now this works double clicking
this modified file get through to him with no problems.

 

[RiggsFolly]

Hi,

I just did this very thing myself between a PC in the UK running XP
Pro(expert) and a Laptop in Florida USA running VISTA something (not sure
what version).

IT WORKS!!!!! Pretty well actually.

But there are a couple of loops to jump through.

The main issue is when one or both of the parties are behind a Router.

Routers have something call NAT as part of their makeup, it stands for
Network Address Translation. It is part of what protects you from the big
bad internet. Basically your internal network (yes even if you only have one
pc plugged to your router its a network) uses ipaddress's that are INvalid
on the internet probably (192.168.x.x). None of the switches/routers out
there will router to those address's.

Your router ( or modem attached to your router) gets one valid internet
ipaddress from your ISP when it is powered up. NAT in the router helps
multiple internal pc's share that one valid address, but there are better
descriptions of what NAT is, on the web, so if you are interested go look.

When Messenger sends the Remote assistance request to the ??expert?? it gets
the ipaddress of the pc it is running on and packages that and some other
bits of data up and sends it to the experts PC. This causes the experts
remote console to initiate and to look for the ipaddress passed as a
parameter. Now because the novice is behind a NAT router that's an ipaddress
that could only exist inside the experts network. The error is saying "I see
no ships", ie that ip is not responding inside the experts network, or worse
it might even be his/hers, very confusing, so it gives that rather
unhelpfull error message.

So the problem is that the novice's Messaenger need to get and send the
ipaddress of the router/modem and not the pc its running on. Not an easy
task for a novice. Nor is editing the strange little file that can be
produced if you use the email option. So Messenger need's a little help from
it's friends!!

uPnP in this case is Messengers friend:

If both the routers have the "uPnP" feature it is easy. uPnP software allows
software inside the routers network to dynamically configure the router.
This will allow the two routers to sort out the confusion, and also open the
correct ports. Port 3389 must be open on both the novice and experts
computer.

So in summary:

1. configure both routers to have uPnP turned on. ( may require reboot of
router)
On my Belkin router thats changed from within "System Settings", yours maybe
different )


2. open port 3389 on both routers ( I did this manually, but maybe with uPnP
enabled it will do it for you )
stick to doing it manually then you will remember to close it again when
you are finished.
On my Belkin that is done by setting up a "Virtual Server" yours maybe
different. That basically means you are telling the router that when it
see's unrequested traffic on port 3389 to pass it to one of the pc's inside
your network to handle. It is how you would run a web server on one pc in
your network)


When you are finished turn off uPnP and close the 3389 port.
Enabling uPnP could be considered a security risk as when enabled, it would
allow malicious code that might get onto your pc to also reconfigure your
router to let it do whatever it wanted. Not a good thing. ( spammers of the
world UNTIE ).


But basically it can work. You should ignore all the "expert" comment out
there on the web about how it is only any good for use on an internal
network.

And good luck

 

[Sheri55]

Hi I don't know why this site won't let me ASK a question.... I'm trying to
use my pc to send an email message to a cell phone....it's so much easier to
type on the pc keyboard. Any suggestions?