remote assistance

[Gene]

Remote assistance via Microsoft Windows Live will not connect

Instant Messenging is connected and working fine.

Remote assistance request sent and received by “expertâ€. Expert accepted
request and sender received acknowledgement that remote access accepted.

Expert received window displaying “waiting for connection†and then message
received:

"remote assistance could not be established because the remote host name
could not be resolved please try again". Repeated attempts without success.

Router Port 3389 opened at location requesting assistance. Nothing done to
router at expert location.

Both computers using Windows XP home edition with same version of Windows
Live 8.1.0178

Any suggestions how to connect? Any help appreciated. Thanks very much!!

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Greetings Gene,

Forwarding port 3389 is not good enough in this scenario - Messenger does not use this port
directly for remote assistance.

Instead, Messenger makes use of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) to establish Remote Assistance
connections. A random port is used which then redirects to your local port 3389. As such,
in order for this to work, the person needing "assistance" must have a router which supports
UPnP.

You can check ones UPnP status by opening up any Messenger window, pressing the Alt key to
bring up the menubar, choosing the Tools menu, then Options, then Connection category and
after waiting several seconds for the information to population, it should display there.

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.

 

[Gene]

thank you very much. I will research with the person needing my assistance.

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Hi,

Shame you can't use Remote Assistance to diagnose Remote Assistance

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.

 

[loptap]

This reply just blew my mind! Not because of what it says - but because of
what I found when I followed the instructions ("...check ones UPnP status
....") - when I did this I got the status "You are currently connected to
..NET Messenger Service using a direct connection (no firewall)" - this
despite the fact I am running NIS 2008 AND my computer IS behind a hardware
firewall - is this just a quirk of the software? My IP address is 192.168.1.2
- so very definitely private - but is the status check simply seeing my
"public" IP address connected to .NET Messenger Service ?

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Hi,

Let it sit there for a minute to fully populate all the data. The first line is referring to
your connect to the .NET Messenger service itself, not your actual network topology (that's
later presented in the dialog).

What "direct connection (no firewall)" means is that you've made an outgoing connection to
the Messenger service on port 1863. The only other thing this line can read is that you're
behind a firewall using HTTP mode (connecting to Messenger on port 80).

So, as long as you can make that outgoing connection, it will say direct. Just lousy wording
on Microsoft's part here.

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger
MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
MessengerGeek Blog: http://www.messengergeek.com
Messenger Resources: http://messenger.jonathankay.com
(c) 2008 Jonathan Kay - If redistributing, you must include this signature or citation