The easy way to setup XP remote assistance?

[Wes Groleau]

My elderly friend has Parkinson's disease
making both vision and hand coordination
difficult. Plus, he's not very computer-savvy.

Hence the need for remote assistance.

Yet, it seems that in order to GET remote
assistance, you have to go through the
very sort of long process that the assistance
is supposed to alleviate! (I did it once
and put it in a Word doc. Garamond 15-point
takes up half a page!)

Anybody want to offer me a batch file version
that I can edit and put on his desktop for
him to double-click?

--
Wes Groleau

A pessimist says the glass is half empty.

An optimist says the glass is half full.

An engineer says somebody made the glass
twice as big as it needed to be.

 

[Guest]

VNC would probably be more suitable. With a bit of batch-programming you can
set this up so one shortcut will launch it in reverse mode, where the server
sends a request to your client. (which would be already running.)

Since the server will only connect to one client IP this is relatively safe
from hacking, his firewall can be set to allow only the outbound connection
from his machine. (The XP firewall will do this by default)

For this to work, your Internet connection will need either a fixed IP or a
fixed hostname, and you will need to open port 5500 inbound on your firewall.

On your machine, you use 'vncviewer -listen' to open the client.

His batchfile would do:
winvnc -connect {Your IP or hostname}

A pessimist says the glass is half empty.

The IT pessimist says, 'We've only installed Vista and the disk is half
full.'

The IT optimist says, 'Nonsense. You could still fit ten copies of XP in the
remaining space..'

 

[Wes Groleau]

VNC would probably be more suitable. .....

Thanks -- and thanks for the command samples.

That's certainly much simpler. I just wonder about
VNC. I've used it in several situations. On a LAN,
it's endurable if you get the settings right, but
I've never found it even usable at any distance.
(I'm fiber optic, he's _some_ sort of broadband, and
there's a thousand miles between us.)

I use RDP at work to administer servers and it's just
like being there--but that's with both machines on the
same LAN. However, I was assuming that having a Microsoft
OS on each end, it would be able to send encoded system
calls instead of VNC's graphics snapshots.

We're going to try VNC. Might not work, but at least it's
simple to set up. Setting up an RDC request is more difficult
for him than the problems he wants help with.

 

[Guest]

It's not quite as fast as RD, but it's fast enough over broadband provided
the server end has the Mirage driver installed.

 

[Wes Groleau]

It's not quite as fast as RD, but it's fast enough over broadband provided
the server end has the Mirage driver installed.

It turns out I'm the backup assistant.
My friend's son has already set everything up,
so when he (the son) is not available to help,
I'll connect using the same protocols, which are....

.... not yet known to me.

 

[Wes Groleau]

It turns out I'm the backup assistant.
My friend's son has already set everything up,
so when he (the son) is not available to help,
I'll connect using the same protocols, which are....

...... gotomypc.com

Wintel native viewer works pretty good. Better
than VNC, in fact over internet, almost as good
as a intranet RDP connection.

Java viewer for other platforms doesn't work in
the three browsers I tried (two of which the vendor
says are supported.) The type of failure was different
in each--so much for Java's advertised portability.

--
Wes Groleau

Nobody believes a theoretical analysis -- except the guy who did it.
Everybody believes an experimental analysis -- except the guy who
did it.
-- Unknown