Remote Assistance Feature of XP

[Russ]

My daughter is getting ready to go to the university so instead of buying
pcanywhere, I thought I would try to make this remote assistance feature
work in XP. I launch Remote Assistance, we communicate via MSN messenger no
problem. She sends a request to me for assistance and I accept. But,
nothing happens after that. I do have a router at my house with a firewall
and it may be preventing this connectivity.

What is my next step to making this work?

Thanks,
Russ

 

[Mike]

-----Original Message-----
My daughter is getting ready to go to the university so instead of buying
pcanywhere, I thought I would try to make this remote assistance feature
work in XP. I launch Remote Assistance, we communicate via MSN messenger no
problem. She sends a request to me for assistance and I accept. But,
nothing happens after that. I do have a router at my house with a firewall
and it may be preventing this connectivity.

What is my next step to making this work?

Thanks,
Russ


.
You will probably need to use the web utility for your

router and forward port 3389. Further, if you have XP's
firewall turned on you will have to go into settings and
turn on port 3389 there also.

 

[RoadRunner]

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...enter/proddocs/en-us/ra_server_close_port.asp

 

[Russ]

Thanks.. Good info. I had a friend of mine request remote assistance and I
was able see his desktop. However, it would not work in the reverse. I
assume my linksys router is not allowing access to my computer.

I have added to the port forwarding page port 3389 and my internal ip
address...But it still does not work.. Still investigating proper setup of
the router..

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Check the contents of the invitation file itself. See whether it contains
the private IP address behind the router, or the public IP address of the
router. My bet is for the former.

You can edit the invite file to change this. I'm not sure whether enabling
UPnP functions on your machine and, perhaps, using Windows Messenger to pass
the invitation, will fix this. Here's a KB that describes the process
involved:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;306298

 

[Peter Sale]

What command (for example, IPCONFIG) can I enter, or what panel can I
navigate too that will tell me the identity of these two IP address?
"... the private IP address behind the router, or the public IP address of
the router. ..."

Once I know the identity of these two IP addresses, how can I configure my
D-Link and/or Linksys router to forward the 3389 port for the correct IP
(private or public) address so that I can request remote assistance from my
PC even though it is behind an NAT router (D-Link DI-624)?

Both my PC, and the distant PC I'm requesting Remote Assistance from are
running Windows XP Pro. My PC is behind a D-Link DI-624 router, while the
distant PC is behind a Linksys WRT54G Router. These are both wireless
routers. An attempt was made to configure both routers so that they would
forward port 3389, although I'm not sure this has be done correctly. That's
why I asked my first and second questions. One PC is running Windows
Messenger 4.7 or while the other is running 5.0. However, I don't think
this is the problem because failure to "resolve host" occurred with both
Windows Messengers 4.7-4.7 and 5.0-5.0.

Lastly, I'm looking into www.portforward.com to attempt to confirm these two
routers are correctly configured to forward port 3389.
--
Regards,

Peter Sale
Santa Monica, CA USA
To email me, just pull 'my-leg.'

 

[Stephen Harris]

What command (for example, IPCONFIG) can I enter, or what panel can I
navigate too that will tell me the identity of these two IP address?
"... the private IP address behind the router, or the public IP address of
the router. ..."

I use ping on the name of the ISP provider. It is a public address.

If you are using a dsl router, then ipconfig will provide a private IP
address.
Your address has been nat'ed (Network Address Translation).

For instance I have a win98 machine with a modem I use for test purposes.
The IP address when I ping the ISP and when I run ipconfig are the same.
I think you can get the same effect by hooking the dsl modem up directly,
unless the ISP provides nat'ed service.

A fair portion of ISPs are nat'ed. If you have this type of ISP and
a router which provides Nat also, this is called a nested Nat.

Do you have a static IP address from ISP?
Is your ISP nat'ed (creating nested Nats when you use the router)?

 

[Jeffrey Randow (MVP)]

IPCONFIG will give you the Private address.

To get the public or WAN address, go visit http://ipaddress.com

Jeffrey Randow (Windows Networking & Smart Display MVP)
(e-mail address removed)

Please post all responses to the newsgroups for the benefit
of all USENET users. Messages sent via email may or may not
be answered depending on time availability....

Remote Networking Technology Support Site -
http://www.remotenetworktechnology.com
Windows XP Expert Zone - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Stephen Harris is quite right, of course, that if your ISP is nat'd this'll
give incorrect results. I've no idea what proportion of folks that applies
to--so far I've only run into it in a few cases--very small ISPs, usually
outside the U.S.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

One good way to test whether you've managed the forwarding correctly, if the
destination machine is XP Professional, is to use Remote Desktop to test.
This needs to be enabled on the destination host--it uses the same RDP
protocol and the same default port, so its a good test.

In a pinch, you can also test via Telnet:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=187628

There's probably a newer version of this article, but it gives the basics.
Substitute your destination hosts IP address for "tserv" in the example.

 

[Jeffrey Randow (MVP)]

There's a cable company around here that services apartments and
nearby homes that passes out 10.0.0.x addresses...

Jeffrey Randow (Windows Networking & Smart Display MVP)
(e-mail address removed)

Please post all responses to the newsgroups for the benefit
of all USENET users. Messages sent via email may or may not
be answered depending on time availability....

Remote Networking Technology Support Site -
http://www.remotenetworktechnology.com
Windows XP Expert Zone - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

 

[Peter Sale]

Hi Bill,

Check the contents of the invitation file itself. See whether it contains

the private IP address >behind the router, or the public IP address of the
router. My bet is for the former."

I know the values for each of these IP addresses. Which address should
appear within the invitation file, the public or private address?

In a pinch, you can also test via Telnet:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=187628

There's probably a newer version of this article, but it gives the basics.
Substitute your destination hosts IP address for "tserv" in the example.

Again, which IP address, public or private should I substitute for the
destination host's IP address?

In any case, the following command seemed to get through
telnet my_public_ip 3389
while
telnet my_public_ip 3399
failed, displaying following error message:
"Connecting to my_public_ip... Could not open connection to the host, on
port 3399: Connect failed."
Of course, I substituted my actual public IP address for the variable
"my_public_ip."

I would love to "request Remote Assistance" from a willing party, who knows
his/her Remote Assistance is working properly, just to confirm whether the
problem is in my PC or the Remote PC I'm attempting to connect to. Any
takers?

--
Regards,

Peter Sale
Santa Monica, CA USA
To email me, just pull 'my-leg.'

 

[Richard Urban]

I do remote assistance on my two grown sons computers whenever they request
it.

I'm game!

Remove the obvious from my e-mail address to contact me. We will set up for
a try (-:

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[Bill Sanderson]

You need the public address of the router. The router must then be set to
route packets on port 3389, TCP to the private IP address of the desired
client machine for Remote Assistance (or Remote desktop!)

So--look in the invitation and find the private IP address, and substitute
the public one.