Remote support for my folks

Sorry got distracted (Dr Who was on and I'm preparing for a rather long trek tomorrow in the Defender:)).

Windows Live Messenger is a better alternative than the Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger, and will also work XP to Vista and visa-verca. You are best supporting any system from Vista though as it works much better from your end than XP does. From the client (XP) end there's no change.

If they're getting a Vista PC all you need to do is talk them through signing on to windows messenger in Vista. What I'd recommend is setting up a hotmail account for them yourself and then tell them the username and password.

There's also this nice piece of middle eastern software that you can run for them that wipes all the ad's and other junk out of Messenger. http://apatch.ikhost.com/downloads.php

If you need more info let me know. I won't be around the PC until lat tomorrow evening though.

Thanks Gents, that all makes sense.

I actually have a copy of Vista from a failed attempt to get my HTPC to run on it so I can install it on my desktop.

Jik22, good point re the IP and router. I don't have a static IP and niether will they.

Cheers.

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Originally Posted by dm_td5

Windows Live Messenger is a better alternative than the Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger

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If you go to messenger.msn.com you'll notice it redirects you to Windows Live Messenger anyway. I've been using MSN for years as it was loads better than the standard Windows Messenger and it looks like they've upgraded / migrated MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger now and done away with the standard windows messenger...

Why not use Hamachi (google it) set yourself up a vpn
then use vnc but restrict its access through the firewall to only work through the VPN interface
Then the user can turn Hamachi on when they want you to access. This works well and is more secure.
VNC passwords are easy to crack so don't expose it to the internet

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WhiteD3

Jik22, good point re the IP and router. I don't have a static IP and niether will they.

Cheers.

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For connecting to them, you can use a Dynamic DNS provider (Such as DynDNS.org) which most decent routers will actually keep updated for you as they have an option in their settings, BUT most only allow you to specify IP addresses for firewall rules and remote management, so you'll probably still have to enter the range of IP's your ISP can assign from...

If you use Hamachi this wont be a problem as it transcends NAT

This is great,, I have the same task,, setting up a PC for my mum and dad,,

Thanks guys.

Some excellent suggestions. I've ordered the PC from Dell today and signed up the ISP.

As soon as it arrives I'm sure I'll have some more questions.

Thanks again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grizzly_Adams

If you go to messenger.msn.com you'll notice it redirects you to Windows Live Messenger anyway. I've been using MSN for years as it was loads better than the standard Windows Messenger and it looks like they've upgraded / migrated MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger now and done away with the standard windows messenger...

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Hey Grizzly, I've installed Vista on my PC (Still waiting on Dell for the new one) and installed Messenger Live. But it won't run. Task manager shows a process called msnmsgr.exe running but no application running.

I've rebooted the router, reinstalled, rebooted, etc with no joy. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Mark

G'day Mark,

That's the right process allright. Sure it's not minimized in the corner somewhere? Should be a little green half-man symbol somewhere in your systray.

If he's down there then either double-click or right-click on him to see the options available.

Apart from that I'm not sure as the first time you run it the main window should normally be displayed...?

If it's still not showing then try killing the msnmgr process and restarting it but if it's set to hide then it'll probably disappear again :(