Remote Windows XP admin ?

[kj]

My mother has Windows XP on her home computer. She's not very
technically savvy, and I help her with computer issues (and end up
doing a lot of basic sysadmin stuff for her) whenever I visit her,
but we live 1,700 miles apart, and I'd like to be able to manage
her computer remotely. How difficult would it be to set this up?
I have ready access to a Windows2000 workstation; could I administer
a Windows XP machine remotely from a Windows2000 workstation? Any
pointers to the relevant keywords to search for would be much
appreciated.

Thanks!

kj

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Look for "Remote Desktop" access.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Which is normally available in Windows XP Pro. Not sure about XP Home.

You may want to take a look at Symantec pcAnywhere remote contol software.

 

[S.Sengupta]

If your mother has Windows XP Professional then you can surely do.
regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Leythos]

My mother has Windows XP on her home computer. She's not very
technically savvy, and I help her with computer issues (and end up
doing a lot of basic sysadmin stuff for her) whenever I visit her,
but we live 1,700 miles apart, and I'd like to be able to manage
her computer remotely. How difficult would it be to set this up?
I have ready access to a Windows2000 workstation; could I administer
a Windows XP machine remotely from a Windows2000 workstation? Any
pointers to the relevant keywords to search for would be much
appreciated.

Since we don't know how she connects to the Internet, it's a little
difficult to provide a perfect solution, but assuming she's using DSL or
Cable and not dial-up then the following is a SIMPLE solution and secures
her machine also:

1) Purchase a router that does nat and pre-configure it for her.

2) Set port 50000 to forward inbound to the first dynamic address provided
by the router.

3) Ship the router to her and have her install the cables and cycle power
/ reboot everything.

4) Get on the phone with her, get it to the download site for VNC, and
walk her through downloading and installing the VNC Server program - takes
a couple minutes to download and then install.

5) Have her set the default port to 50000 and create a BIG password - this
is another 10 second configuration setting.

Now on your computer, install the VNC client and then use it to VNC into
her computer - no matter if she's using HOME or Pro or even 2000, 98, ME,
etc... It will work the same as PcAnywhere - you can see her computer and
control it as though you were sitting next to her.

 

[kj]

Thanks for all the pointers. Now I have a better idea of what to
work with. Special thanks to Leythos for his "poor-man's pcAnywhere"
scheme. Can't wait to try it out!

kj

 

[Leythos]

Thanks for all the pointers. Now I have a better idea of what to
work with. Special thanks to Leythos for his "poor-man's pcAnywhere"
scheme. Can't wait to try it out!

Just remember that if you are going to use port-forwarding make sure that
you don't use the default ports - I know that obscurity does not mean
security, but we selected ports for this that we never see scanned as a
first measure, then we use a local VNC password that isn't tied to the OS,
and then each workstation is set with a user password so that they have to
know the VNC password and then logon to the workstation with a valid
user/pwd also. We also set VNC to lock the workstation when exiting and
all sessions are shared - so that one rogue hacker could not lock the
others out.