I would welcome discussion of experience people have had with supporting a family member's computer remotely.For example, my mother (barely computer literate) frequently has questions ("what should I do with this pop-up?") and problems that require some knowledgable support.I live 400 miles away. Resolving things over the phone is a painful experience, with my mother being my eyes and hands. A knowledgable family member (actually a certified tech) lives closer; but he is not as available.I have heard about, but know almost nothing about, MS Remote Terminal and a product called Logme in Rescue.Do these have equivalent capability with respect to remote control of someone's computer? Are there other products that do pretty much the same thing?I got some experience, from my mother's point of view, with "Rescue" when I had a debug session with Symantec techs. They use "Rescue". I was very impressed with its capabilities and user interface.I liked the fact that "Rescue" automagically reconnected after the system was restarted (and I logged in as a user with admin capability).I also liked the fact that I had to connect to them first. I do __not__ want a solution where anyone can connect to my mother's computer over the internet if they know the right things (whatever that might be).One issue with "Rescue" -- or at least, Symantec's use of it: it required that I connect to a web site using IE. Of course, that would mean that a web server is running on the support person's computer -- moi!I hope that is not the only way to make the connection to a "Rescue" server. I might need to ask the "Rescue" people, unless someone here has experience with it.Anyway, any thoughts or suggestion of things that I should consider in evaluating alternatives would be appreciated.1 person got this answerI do too

Jack wrote:In your case, Team Viewer seems to be the right solution.You may very well be right. Thanks so much for the insight and all the pointers. I will follow through with each of them to learn more.The idea here is Not the software but he Service. I.e. the use of their server as a mitigating server to avoid the need of extensive remote configuration (especially when the remote user that gets the help does not know how to configure sophisticated remote software, find it external/internal IPs, and open ports through Routers).Can you explain this in more detail? How exactly is their server involved in the communication between my computer (the remote "support" person) and my mother's computer (the computer being supported remotely)?I am a system architect specializing in network protocols. So you do not need to sugar coat anything. The only problem is: I do not know beans about the Windows system architecture -- although I am eager to learn.When I used LogMeIn Rescue with Symantec, they had me connect to a web server via IE. They gave me a "pin" to enter. That caused an executable to be downloaded to my computer, which I was instructed to run. That established the LogMeIn connection and user interface.Is that the "mitigating server" function you refer to?I presume the executable connected to a LogMeIn server program running on a Symantec system, presumably on an isolated network perhaps even outside the Symantec firewall.Or would their be an intermediary TeamViewer program be running on the "mitigating server", too?I guess I can see the need for such a "mitigating server" even for my "personal use" purposes. I was wondering how the network connection would be established, given that both my mother's computer and mine are behind a cable company firewall.I'm not even aware of my external IP address (dynamically assigned) unless I connect to whatsmyip.org. I'm behind a wireless router of my own. So ipconfig shows me the IP address assigned by the back end of my router: a 192.*.*.* address, which is limited to the local network. But even before I set up the wireless network, I believe the IP addressed assigned by the cable company was an internal IP address, not the external IP address. My recollection might be fuzzy; that was many years ago.My mother's computer uses DSL over a phone line(!). So things are even murkier for her. Again, ipconfig shows the IP address assigned to the local network between her computer and the DSL modem, not the external IP address.Well, I'm rambling. Just hadn't thought it through before.Feel free to add to or correct the above.

HiThe very general concept of the services like Logmein, and Team Viewer is similar.On the Remote computer, the person that needs help runs the Team Viewer application that connects to the Mitigating Server and say, "here I am", this is the ports that I am using, my external IP is yyyy, and my Id and password are xxxx.The person has to call you, or send email and tell you what is the Id and password that he/she got for the session is.Since the remote program is initiating the connection there is no worry about port opening through Firewall.You start your team viewer and type in the Id and password. Your Team Viewer sends it to the mitigating sever the Id and password, and the server makes a connection between the two computers. The connection is VPN-AES secured, so there are No leaks of content in-between.Team Viewer is better than Logmein because it provides overall more remote capacity (Logmein lacking some functions when it is free) the only restriction is Not to use it for paid work.As far as I know the team viewer application (the one that you download) runs on bot computers the mitiagting server just provide the aspects of the connection.TeamViewer is licensed under the GPL - the source code is available (based on UltraVNC)Read my page http://www.ezlan.net/vnc.html Team Viewer server allows you to skip all the set up aspects establishing the connection and handle NAT port forwarding with No need to configure Routers/NAT rules, but the actual running of the computers is done by UltraVNC. Jack-MVP Windows Networking. WWW.EZLAN.NET

Jack wrote:On the Remote computer, the person that needs help runs the Team Viewer application that connects to the Mitigating Server and say, "here I am", this is the ports that I am using, my external IP is yyyy, and my Id and password are xxxx.The person has to call you, or send email and tell you what is the Id and password that he/she got for the session is.[....]You start your team viewer and type in the Id and password. Your Team Viewer sends it to the mitigating sever the Id and password, and the server makes a connection between the two computers. The connection is VPN-AES secured, so there are No leaks of content in-between.Thanks for details.FYI, when I used LogMeIn Rescue (not the free version) with Symantec, things worked in reverse. The support person gave me the "id and password" -- actually just a "pin". I was told to go to http://help.norton.com, which is in the same IP subnet as symantec.com, and enter the "pin". That caused an executable to be downloaded on my computer, which I was instructed to run. That set up the LogMeIn session, which I needed to confirm in order complete the connection establishment.But of course, that's a professional support set-up, and Symantec has no problem running its own web server for this service.Anyway, I do need to look into TeamViewer for personal use in more detail. From what you describe, it does sound like a good solution for me.Thanks again.

If you want a third party app, look at TeamViewer. If you want a more robust solution, check out RHUBhttp://www.rhubcom.com .