Brian Vagnoni on 6 Jun 2008 06:45:36 -0700


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [PLUG] Remote Control of Windows Vista


-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces@lists.phillylinux.org
[mailto:plug-bounces@lists.phillylinux.org] On Behalf Of Casey Bralla
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 5:58 AM
To: Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List
Subject: [PLUG] Remote Control of Windows Vista

My 81 year old dad's computer died, so he bought a new computer with Windows

Vista.   The only thing that has kept me sane as he has repeatedly called me

for help over the last few years had been my ability to take remote control 
of his old WinXP laptop.   I had used the free WinVNC server on his
computer, 
and KDE's remote desktop on mine.


Apparently, WinVNC does not support Vista, so I had him load the newest 
version of UltraVNC (www.uvnc.com) which does.   Unfortunately, as I walked 
him through the installation (and I did a parallel installation on my WinXP 
system running in a vbox), we found that I could not make contact with his 
computer, even though it UVNC appeared to be running properly.   My attempt 
to contact his computer eventually timed out.

I'm fairly certain that I have his correct IP address, and that our ISPs are

not blocking the port (at least, they didn't used to block them as of a few 
months ago).

I suspect the Vista firewall is blocking the connection, but I've never used

Vista and so can't walk him through opening up the firewall (if that is the 
problem).   


Anybody fought this problem with Vista?   How can I use open source tools to

take remote control of a Vista computer?



First, are you sure you have his right ip? The free dynamic dns client from
either noip(must have your own domain) or tzo(free domain names I think),
dyndns(free domains up to 5 hosts per account) would be a big help as I use
them for many of my clients.

What kind of connection? Verizon dsl or Comcast? Verizon blocks incoming
traffic so you will need to fix that in the Westell modem.

Vista should have just asked him whether or not he wanted to open a port
from the server. It's my guess that the server is not running or windows
remote desktop might be using the same ports.

You would normally go into the security center via the control panel and
from him giving you the tab description you should be able to figure it out
from there.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Vagnoni
PGP Digital Fingerprint
F076 6EEE 06E5 BEEF EBBD  BD36 F29E 850D FC32 3955
--------------------------------------------------------------------



___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug