In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
family who look to me for technical support. It can get quite time
consuming to visit people just to sort out their email or fix up some
other problem.

On a couple of relatives' PCs, I have installed TightVNC, so that I
can start up VNC viewer in listen mode (with inbound port forwarding
on my router), and they can then start up VNC server, and then connect
to my viewer. This works well, except for a few niggles with Vista.

My question is: is there an easier solution for the remote end that
doesn't involve me giving a helpless user detailed instructions on how
to download and install VNC, and then how to start it up and connect
to me? Perhaps something like a web page with an ActiveX control they
can accept? It would need to initiate the connection to me, or perhaps
use some kind of tunnel, so that they don't need to fiddle with their
router. If there were an ActiveX version of VNC server that I could
embed within a page of my own with my IP address pre-set as a parameter,
for it to connect to, that would make things really easy!

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Cheers
Tony

-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

In article <hcvbv2$tro$1@softins.clara.co.uk>, Tony Mountifield says...
> 
> In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
> family who look to me for technical support. It can get quite time
> consuming to visit people just to sort out their email or fix up some
> other problem.
> 
> My question is: is there an easier solution for the remote end that
> doesn't involve me giving a helpless user detailed instructions on how
> to download and install VNC, and then how to start it up and connect
> to me? Perhaps something like a web page with an ActiveX control they
> can accept? It would need to initiate the connection to me, or perhaps
> use some kind of tunnel, so that they don't need to fiddle with their
> router. If there were an ActiveX version of VNC server that I could
> embed within a page of my own with my IP address pre-set as a parameter,
> for it to connect to, that would make things really easy!
> 
> Any ideas would be much appreciated!
> 
Here's one....stop "helping" people. Someone who is completely oblivious 
to the fact Remote Assistance has been built into Windows for this very 
reason for the thick end of a decade, who instead gets clueless people 
to install VNC and thus leave their systems wide open to being 
exploited, should not be fixing anyones computers. Somehow I get the 
feeling you don't make sure they've uninstalled VNC or closed the ports 
on their routers.

Here, go learn something:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/remoteassist/def
ault.mspx

Note that many of the articles are dated from 8 years ago, its been out 
that long.

Fucking amateurs. I'm sick to goddamned death of having to go and clear 
up the mess they leave. 

-- 
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.

Tony Mountifield wrote:
> In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
> family who look to me for technical support.

For exactly the same scenario I use either Logmein Free or Teamviewer.

The former lets you sort out the problem without them having to be there as 
long as the PC is turned on. The latter doesn't install services etc.

In article ,
Conor   wrote:
> In article <hcvbv2$tro$1@softins.clara.co.uk>, Tony Mountifield says...
> > 
> > In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
> > family who look to me for technical support. It can get quite time
> > consuming to visit people just to sort out their email or fix up some
> > other problem.
> > 
> > My question is: is there an easier solution for the remote end that
> > doesn't involve me giving a helpless user detailed instructions on how
> > to download and install VNC, and then how to start it up and connect
> > to me? Perhaps something like a web page with an ActiveX control they
> > can accept? It would need to initiate the connection to me, or perhaps
> > use some kind of tunnel, so that they don't need to fiddle with their
> > router. If there were an ActiveX version of VNC server that I could
> > embed within a page of my own with my IP address pre-set as a parameter,
> > for it to connect to, that would make things really easy!
> > 
> > Any ideas would be much appreciated!
> > 
> Here's one....stop "helping" people. Someone who is completely oblivious 
> to the fact Remote Assistance has been built into Windows for this very 
> reason for the thick end of a decade, who instead gets clueless people 
> to install VNC and thus leave their systems wide open to being 
> exploited, should not be fixing anyones computers. Somehow I get the 
> feeling you don't make sure they've uninstalled VNC or closed the ports 
> on their routers.

Thank you Conor, for your gracious and knowlegeable reply. If only your
character were as well developed as your implied expertise.

If you had read my message carefully, you would have realised that I do
not get them to open ports on their routers. I have the VNC listen port
open on my router and have the remote end connect out to me.

> Here, go learn something:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/remoteassist/def
> ault.mspx

Thank you, I will look at that again, as I can't remember why I found
Remote Assistance wasn't when I first looked at it a long time ago.

> Note that many of the articles are dated from 8 years ago, its been out 
> that long.
> 
> Fucking amateurs. I'm sick to goddamned death of having to go and clear 
> up the mess they leave. 

Well spend the time improving your manner of speaking instead.

Regards
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

In article ,
Grant  wrote:
> Tony Mountifield wrote:
> > In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
> > family who look to me for technical support.
> 
> For exactly the same scenario I use either Logmein Free or Teamviewer.
> 
> The former lets you sort out the problem without them having to be there as 
> long as the PC is turned on. The latter doesn't install services etc. 

Thank you, Grant! I'll have a look at them both.

Cheers
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

Tony Mountifield wrote:
> 
> Thank you, I will look at that again, as I can't remember why I found
> Remote Assistance wasn't when I first looked at it a long time ago.

Remote assistance still requires messing about with firewall ports and 
is unnecessarily messy for a novice user to do the invitation bits at 
their end, if they haven't managed the art of working strange 
applications, clicking or sending links in mail, responding to windows 
messenger etc.

Much prefer teamviewer. Very easy to guide someone to run the 
non-installable 'join a session' customer module as long as they can 
view a web page.

-- 
Adrian C

In article ,
Adrian C  <email@here.invalid> wrote:
> Tony Mountifield wrote:
> > 
> > Thank you, I will look at that again, as I can't remember why I found
> > Remote Assistance wasn't when I first looked at it a long time ago.
> 
> Remote assistance still requires messing about with firewall ports and 
> is unnecessarily messy for a novice user to do the invitation bits at 
> their end, if they haven't managed the art of working strange 
> applications, clicking or sending links in mail, responding to windows 
> messenger etc.
> 
> Much prefer teamviewer. Very easy to guide someone to run the 
> non-installable 'join a session' customer module as long as they can 
> view a web page.

Yes, I looked at the Teamviewer website last night when Grant suggested it;
it looks to be just the job. Will try it out over the weekend.

Thanks
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

Grant wrote:
> Tony Mountifield wrote:
>> In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
>> family who look to me for technical support.
>
> For exactly the same scenario I use either Logmein Free or Teamviewer.

Thanks for that. I've just be sorting out my sister's computer in Wales 
(I'm in France) with Teamviewer. I appreciated the fact that it can just 
be run without installation and, from her end, was much easier to get 
going than with the Windows remote thingy.

Currently, after a giant cleanup I'm running defrag on hers and have set 
her machine to change it's 80 giga main partition from fat32 (ye gods!) 
to NTFS whe she restarts..

Anyway, thanks again, an excellent programme.

"Tony Mountifield"  wrote in message 
news:hcvbv2$tro$1@softins.clara.co.uk...
> In common with most techies, I have a sizeable group of friends and
> family who look to me for technical support. It can get quite time
> consuming to visit people just to sort out their email or fix up some
> other problem.
>
> On a couple of relatives' PCs, I have installed TightVNC, so that I
> can start up VNC viewer in listen mode (with inbound port forwarding
> on my router), and they can then start up VNC server, and then connect
> to my viewer. This works well, except for a few niggles with Vista.
>
> My question is: is there an easier solution for the remote end that
> doesn't involve me giving a helpless user detailed instructions on how
> to download and install VNC, and then how to start it up and connect
> to me? Perhaps something like a web page with an ActiveX control they
> can accept? It would need to initiate the connection to me, or perhaps
> use some kind of tunnel, so that they don't need to fiddle with their
> router. If there were an ActiveX version of VNC server that I could
> embed within a page of my own with my IP address pre-set as a parameter,
> for it to connect to, that would make things really easy!
>
> Any ideas would be much appreciated!
>
> Cheers
> Tony
>
> -- 
> Tony Mountifield
> Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
> Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

When I have to sort my elderly fathers computer, which is quite often, I use 
Gross Loop. http://www.crossloop.com/ It's a web based secure system simply 
set up and works well.
Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith wrote:
> When I have to sort my elderly fathers computer, which is quite often, I 
> use Gross Loop. http://www.crossloop.com/ It's a web based secure system 
> simply set up and works well.

really Gross?

-- 
Adrian C