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Simple, Free Web Remote PC Control?
MeatballCB writes "Hey folks. Being the 'technical' guy of the family, I often get calls from friends and family members when they're having PC issues. Most of these folks are not technical, so trying to troubleshoot problems over the phone can often be a challenge. Anyone know of a simple-to-use and (preferably) free service that would allow for remote viewing/control of their PCs? I know there's WebEx and GoToMyPC, but I hate to pay for something I'd use once every two months. I also know about VNC, but trying to walk someone through opening up ports on their router that thinks their Internet is broken when their homepage gets changed is not realistic. Anyone know of anything that would be easy to set up and use?"
It's a free service for home use. QED.
I'm a big fan of LogMeIn Free. It's pretty easy to setup, and it gives you access to the pc through any browser. You don't have to worry about port issues or anything. I think it's what you should really look into using.
UltraVNC single click. Its a reverse VNC, designed for this purpose. They double click the executable, and then automatically connects to your listening client.
Its customizable so you can make it look professional if needed. They only have to run the file, it does everything else.
... you just need to know that your friends (and family members) DO NOT need to mess with their routers. Just YOUR router needs to open a single port (5500/tcp) and forward it to your workstation. Make your friends run the VNC server as usual, start the VNC client on your workstation in LISTENER mode, tell your friends to select "add new client" from the VNC server icon context menu, and make them enter your IP or dyndns address into the popup dialog.
(Technically, this swaps the roles of client and server on the TCP level, but VNC still behaves as expected.)
Tux2000
Denken hilft.