Remote Desktop Support

[Clocker]

What free app/service are you guys using for remote support of family/friends Windows 7 PCs? My brother has Win7 Home and will need some help configuring a couple things. I'd like to control his PC remotely if possible...

Edit: It needs to be simple for him to setup at his end!

Thanks,
Clocker

PS...MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

 

[ddrueding]

CrossLoop if I have to walk them through the setup and the built-in Remote Desktop Client if I can do it in advance.

 

[Mercutio]

Crossloop and Teamviewer are both good. You can also use Showmewhatswrong.com, which makes a video you can look at, for some things.

 

[MaxBurn]

There is a built in remote assistance that works OK the one time I used it. Also like teamviewer. Keep seeing logmein being mentioned as well.

Tight VNC is easy to install too, I thought so anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

The problem with Remote Assistance and VNC is that both require firewall configuration that are beyond the reach of most users.

 

[Howell]

Teamviewer is very easy to talk someone through. I'll have to check out Crossloop.

 

[Stereodude]

What free app/service are you guys using for remote support of family/friends Windows 7 PCs? My brother has Win7 Home and will need some help configuring a couple things. I'd like to control his PC remotely if possible...

Edit: It needs to be simple for him to setup at his end!

Thanks,
Clocker

PS...MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

What don't you use remote desktop? There's a hack to enable it on Windows 7 Home Premium.

 

[MaxBurn]

What don't you use remote desktop? There's a hack to enable it on Windows 7 Home Premium.

Presumably because he wants them to be able to watch what he is doing so they can do it next time.

Also I think on single user desktop machines doesn't it log out the local operator when someone RDPs in?

 

[Mercutio]

RDP only allows a single viewer per console. If you want something other than that you're really talking about doing something that's based on VNC somehow.

 

[Clocker]

Crossloop worked great guys. Thanks!

 

[CougTek]

Search for "Concurrent RDP Patcher" on Google to enable RDP on Windows 7 Home Premium. That way you can connect remotely to the system with something like LogMeIn, even if there's no one on the other computer or without disturbing the other user and logging in another session than his own.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't think I was aware of that. Thanks!

 

[MaxBurn]

I may be mistaken but I think the remote assistance deal with windows takes care of the path to the internet through a NAT router by contacting microsoft and using them as a proxy. What I don't like is apparently you also need to exchange some sort of key via email. I explored it a bit but settled on VNC.

 

[Mercutio]

I have to admit I haven't tried using it outside of a quick classroom demonstration since before Windows XP got its first service pack. The fact remains that it's easier to walk people through downloading and installing Crossloop than to explain that they need to go to whatever thingy they use to look at to see e-mail and attach a Remote Assistance invitation.

Most often these are people whose minds are blown by the concept of doing something with a file in the first place.

 

[time]

With a high latency situation like you get internationally, Crossloop is an absolute dog. I assume the culprit is chiefly VNC (not even TightVNC?). It's taken me more than 10 times longer to get stuff done (with the host connected via home DSL), and it's sucking the life out of the uploads I'm trying to do.

Any alternatives that don't cost >$500? I'm seriously wondering if it's worth experimenting with Hamachi and CougTek's magic RDP patch.

I've spent a full day trying to upload someone's emails to Google Apps - at this rate it will take another 3 days to complete.

 

[Mercutio]

VNC is a dog regardless. It was made for high bandwidth, low-latency networks. There's just no getting around that. It actually uses UltraVNC for its foundation, but that's because many VNC variants don't work properly with UAC prompts on Vista and Windows 7.

Hamachi + RDP is my preferred means of handling as much remote work as I can. I'm told that Hamachi turns into a dog for international connectivity as well, but that's not something I've observed firsthand.

 

[Bookmage]

i've used join.me and teamviewer

 

[CougTek]

I'm told that Hamachi turns into a dog for international connectivity as well, but that's not something I've observed firsthand.

I configured a Hamachi network on a test Windows 7 system for Time to play with from Australia and he found the speed to be quite decent (as long as I wasn't heavily using my network for something else). He also let me connect via RDP thru Hamachi on a system he manages and I can confirm that it was workable, as long as I didn't try web browsing on the remote computer.

So for long distance support, RDP through Hamachi seems to be the way to go.

 

[Howell]

Did you (artificially) restrict network bandwidth to see what the limits of usability might be? Testing for latency might be nice but I can't think how you would control that at the moment.

 

[time]

Between Quebec and Australia, I measured pings of about 275mS through Hamachi, which is not shabby at all for a link over that distance. Based on scrolling and object dragging speed, I estimate it was 4 or 5 times faster than my CrossLoop experience between Australia and New Zealand, which returned pings of about 80mS.

So a massive improvement, probably an order of magnitude or more in a high latency situation. BTW, CougTek's upstream link was cable and limited to about 800kb/s, so comparable to basic DSL for remote hosting purposes. As he hinted, I also got to try it while he was busy torrenting, and that brought it back down to about the same experience as VNC.

Kudos to CougTek for suggesting this experiment and donating hours of his time. Cheers mate.

I also did some local tests through Hamachi that highlighted the full awesomeness of that RDP patch. I ran a single-threaded benchmark concurrently in both the console and an RDP session on a dual-core processor and observed no appreciable slowdown. I have read, but haven't tested, that concurrency is limited to 1 local and 2 remote sessions. That's still 3 users running at full speed on a quad or hex core CPU with the consumer version of Windows. Just like a non-Microsoft OS ...

 

[Mercutio]

I can state with absolute certainty that it's possible to have a decent RDP experience over a sub-28.8kpbs dialup connection, because I used to have to do that. The big magic is Hamachi and its configuration-less VPN. I use it a lot to maintain systems so that I don't have to make office visits any more and for that purpose it's rock solid.

However, I've gotten feedback that it's less reliable for notebook that change their connection status a lot. I can see my brother's notebook in Prague for a day or two, for example, then it will disappear for a several weeks. As sweet as Hamachi is, that's an issue I'm aware of.

 

[Handruin]

Did you (artificially) restrict network bandwidth to see what the limits of usability might be? Testing for latency might be nice but I can't think how you would control that at the moment.

I've used this many times to simulate network latency with good results. It has exposed issues prior to software going out to customers.
http://wanem.sourceforge.net/

 

[Howell]

I've used this many times to simulate network latency with good results. It has exposed issues prior to software going out to customers.
http://wanem.sourceforge.net/

Very cool. Thanks.

 

[susan7]

try GoSupportNow.
no firewall configuration needed. it has guaranteed connection.

What free app/service are you guys using for remote support of family/friends Windows 7 PCs? My brother has Win7 Home and will need some help configuring a couple things. I'd like to control his PC remotely if possible...

Edit: It needs to be simple for him to setup at his end!

Thanks,
Clocker

PS...MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

 

[CougTek]

Am I the only one to suddenly have difficulties with RDP on fully patched Windows 7 computers? In the past two weeks, I haven't not been able to access remote computers thru Hamachi tunnels using RDP, something I did with one finger in the nose just a few months ago. Did MS broke something with a patch?

When I try to connect to a remote computer, the connection just timeout, informing me that the computer is disconnected or otherwise. Did I forget how to do something THAT simple? Because I remember not long ago, I teached someone else how to do this.

 

[Mercutio]

There WAS just a patch to RDP to fix a well-known vulnerability. And now that I think of it, that might explain why I have two different OSX people whining about RDP connections that look to me like they should work.

Hamachi also underwent a change in service terms recently, so that if you have a free network with more than five members, only five members are allowed to be connected at the same time where before it would allow 15. Fortunately, the paid option to get 32 members is only $20/year.

So anyway, stuff is different right now than it was a month or six weeks ago.

 

[CougTek]

Just with two computers connected to the same network, I can no longer connect using RDP. I guess the patch means my concurrent session patch no longer works. I tried LogMeIn and it sucks (huge delays). I don't have much experience with VNC, but apparently that's the way I'll have to go. Tabarnack.

 

[Mercutio]

As I recall, LogMeIn is basically just an extension to VNC anyway.
VNC is pretty much always going to be dreadful on anything that isn't at least 10Mbit. Even tightvnc is nothing like RDP in terms of responsiveness.

 

[timwhit]

I find LogMeIn to work pretty well.

 

[CougTek]

Ok, I figured it out. My memory was failing me up to the moment I checked all the (few) steps needed to use remote desktop on Windows 7. I'll have to do this more often I guess.

And LogMeIn is definetly slower than RDP. I did both one after the other and it's obvious. Try it, you'll see.

 

[time]

VNC is pretty much always going to be dreadful on anything that isn't at least 10Mbit. Even tightvnc is nothing like RDP in terms of responsiveness.

Agree 100%; that's why I've always avoided VNC unless there was no alternative.