I'm asking this for a friend, who had asked me for some help, and I came up clueless.

Basically he has a bunch of other friends who rely on him to help them out with their computer problems, such as getting software/adware/etc removed from their computers, and other simple maintenance tasks that they have difficulty with.

Because some of them live fairly far away, he doesn't want to have to drive 45-60 minutes to do something that will take 10 or 15 minutes to do, and thought that doing something like Remote Assistance or VNC would be a good alternative.

From what he's noticed, his friends are behind a router/firewall and don't really have the knowledge to go in and forward ports from their router to their computer. IP addresses pretty much mean nothing to them.

Are there any utilities out there that would, for example, load up a VNC server as well as use UPnP to temporarily open up the port on the router? I've been googololing for some possibilities but can't really find anything with a simple solution. The remote assistance feature built into XP seemed like a pretty simple thing to do, but from looking at the "request file" it emails, it uses the local IP of the computer, and still has the router problem.


Thanks!

- Joe

12/1/2005 9:09:40 PM

If they have Windows XP Professional then he could use Remote Desktop to get to the PCs.

Remote Desktop uses port 3389.

Forward that port on the router that the target computer is connected to. This should be done for all of the computers he would need to connect to. If he has their external IP he could connect to all of the PCs using the Remote Desktop client on his PC. It will automatically direct the login to the PC that has 3389 forwarded. If all of them are on the same router then that makes things more difficult.

VNC can be a security risk so it may not be wise to keep it always running ...

[Edited on December 1, 2005 at 9:47 PM. Reason : +]

12/1/2005 9:44:48 PM

http://hamachi.cc

12/1/2005 9:45:42 PM

^^ yea, I think I didn't make my first post clear. He knows RDesktop and RAssistance are options, but doesn't want to figure out how to tell his friends to login to their routers and forward the ports. They don't really understand how the whole system works, other than it allows them to check their email...

^ I forgot completely about this program. Thank you.

12/1/2005 9:51:23 PM

try using https://www.copilot.com/

there's a way to use it for 3 minutes for free, or longer for a fee

if your friend really wants the help, he can pay and you can connect to his computer with ease

12/1/2005 10:12:26 PM

We got Hamachi set up on his computer, so he can use VNC or NetMeeting to do the Desktop sharing, and it works wonderfully.

12/2/2005 12:40:05 AM