MartinLuther

Although my mum is okay using a PC she does tend to mess things up from time to time. I was wondering if there is a cheap and easy way of controlling her PC from mine. I've seen packages years ago that could do this but I was wondering if there was any free software available nowadays to do this?

Cheers

warbs4

https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en

Bit slow, but they do have a free version

newjersey

You can get the PC Anywhere from Symantec (in two copies evidently) or use the built in Terminal Services + Remote Desktop, if you are running Windows 2000 or later, but the latter is a tad more techie and I am not sure if it works in home editions.......

Mind that some internet providers block the ports normally used for the remote access applications, because it is not a kind of application normally used for private purposes - been hit with this by one, they refused to talk to me and pointed to a contract where it said "no business use", and suggested to change the contract to a business one for hundreds/month if I insisted. Just be aware it may be an issue and try before you buy.

What else - ah, anti-virus software may interfere with these things as well, may need a bit of fiddling around before it all works together - AND it will remain a security risk for both ends if not properly secured.

NJ

worzel

Good post. Every week when I speak to my mum she tells me that the PC (not her of course) has done something weird again and we spend half of our conversation with me trying to guess what she has done and give her instructions to fix it.

EvannTel

Used VNC here and in the UK, used by our tech people in both countries. Works well and over internet no probs.

There are free versions too.

www.vnc.com

Also you might ask in "the Lab" forum as there are some very clever techy people in there"

Hutch

Crossloop is incredibly easy to use.

MartinLuther

Thanks for the suggestions guys. It was PC anywhere I used ages ago (on a 9600 baud link )

My mum has some gnomes that come and reconfigure her computer from time to time. She seems to think I can talk her through the process of fixing her email connection. I don't think she's aware that fixing computers is an art rather than a science.

If I get something set up; I wonder if I'll be able to view next year's 6 nations this way?

@boy

I regularly sort out my mums PC (she is in Ireland). Do it using the Remote Assistance feature in XP.
She clicks Start/Help/Invite a friend to connect to your pc....
Email request comes through. I connect to her PC and fix whatever she has most recently messed up ;-)

Easy Peasy Japanesey - no additional software required.

JackTheLad

I know you were joking, but the answer is No. I've tried remoting from one PC here in my own house to another, where the other is running a stream of a Grand Prix. It is worse than useless. All these Remote Desktop software rely on compressing the image from the remote PC and only transmitting the delta of that image a few times a second after that.

If that image changes a huge amount repeatedly each second, so the entire image has to be re-compressed every time (as it would do if the PC you are remoting into was showing a video), they really can't handle it, and they slow to a crawl,and in my case, it hangs.

And thats with 2 PCs in the same house. Can you imagine watching a video on another PC half way around the world?

JTL

MartinLuther

I suspected as much. I wonder if I could sneak some proxy server software on there while she's not looking?

ossigeno

I would use VNC or Microsoft SharedView