If your like me then you probably have a few friends how come to you from time to time to fix problems on their computers, I don't mind this as I'll some times ask for a favour in return, or they'll just by me beer :) always goes down well!
More than often they will call me up and ask me to help them, which is fine as I then will try and use Remote Assistance via msn. But this doesn't always work as people have firewalls or even just their router doesn't allow access, regardless of having enable remote assistance checked on the system properties.
One product that I have come across that seems to work when msn remote assistance doesn't is a product called Teamviewer. This can be downloaded from www.teamviewer.com
What I found with this is that is works like products such as goto meeting and ISLLight. For personal use this product is free, however you can purchase a commercial licence for it and use it on your corporate network.
There are two Modules to Teamviewer
- The Support module (the module I use)
- The customer module (the module my friends use)
The support module is the full install, where as the customer module is just a simple exe that is downloadable from the Teamviewer webiste or can be emailed as a link from the support module to the customer.
Once your friend with the pc problems has got that running they will need to give you the Session ID and Password that is on the screen
Once they have told you the details you enter it in your screen:
once you have entered in the password you will then be presented with your friends desktop:
you also have the option to re-boot the remote PC and also re-boot into safe mode, upon each reboot it re-launches the Teamviewer client module with the same session ID and password so you can reconnect to the session.
I have to say for a free piece of software I like this product very much and it has been very useful for me on many occasions (especially remote supporting my dad's laptop as I am up here in Edinburgh and he is down in Brighton :))