[PLUG] Remote Control of Windows Vista

[Casey Bralla <MailList@NerdWorld.org>]

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?


-- 


Casey Bralla
Chief Nerd in Residence
The NerdWorld Organisation
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