The basic idea of this program is that someone who needs computer help from me can download a ~100K executable and launch it, and I’m instantly controlling and viewing their computer screen. There’s no installation, no router settings non-sense, just click and go. It really has opened up a whole world of possibilities for me to painlessly help friends and relatives with simple computer problems.

There is one catch though. You’ll need to spend about 30 minutes creating your own custom executable and configuring your own router. Follow the links below to get started.

1. The main UltraVNC SC (SingleClick) page walks you through the steps to set up your own executable.
2. This PDF offers more detailed instructions.
3. There is also a forum for further help if you need it.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind.

1. Your VNC viewer should be running in listening mode and listening to the IP address of the person you want to help. Send the person you are helping to www.whatismyip.com and have them tell you their IP address and type that into your listener settings as so:
   
   X’s just there to hide the real IP address. 5500 is the port to listen to, 5500 is the default so hopefully you won’t have to change this.
2. The IP address you put into the host section of the helpdesk.txt file is your own IP address. Thus YOU should visit www.whatismyip.com and put that address in there.
   Here is the host section of my helpdesk.txt file for example:
   [HOST]
Internet support
-connect 68.168.X.XXX:5500 -noregistry
3. If you really need to help someone with a computer problem and don’t have time to do this setup stuff then you may want to try FogCreeks CoPilot product which does the same thing but more easily. (Drawback, it costs $10.00)

I’d love to see something similar to this for a Mac. I haven’t found anything yet though. If anyone knows of one, let me know.

[tags]copilot, copilot alternative, vnc, tech support, help[/tags]

Here’s the answer:

1. Goto Start>Run and type gpedit.msc
2. Once it comes up go to computer configuration go to Windows>Settings>local policies>security options
   (For Windows XP you’d go to: Windows Settings>Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options)
3. From there you will see the require Ctl-Alt-Del setting. Disable it. (I’m not sure if you need to do this and this isn’t shown here in Windows XP.)
4. Next find the one that says “Amount of idle time required before suspending session” and change it to its maximum value 99999.

I found part of this answer here.

It was quite hard to to locate this gem of information on the web but here are all of the searches I tried:

1. “this computer is in use and has been locked” #The message I want to not see
2. disable “this computer is in use and has been locked”
3. “Server 2003″ lock after time
4. “Server 2003″ auto logoff after set time
5. “Server 2003″ locked

The short answer is:
Give up! .. don’t run it under terminal services, try VNC instead.

The long answer is:
I searched for too many terms to even recall. I came across a lot of websites and a lot of advice for this problem. The basic problem is that when you’re not actively using terminal services, the desktop and everything GUI goes away somehow. That’s why Autoit stopped working. I tried setting up the AutoIt script to run as a service but nothing happened when I launched the service and it seemed like an overly-complex solution to research any further. The second solution I had come across (using VNC) seemed like a reasonable idea so I went that route and everything is now working fine.

Here are the discussions I found on this issue:
http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t4026.html
http://tinyurl.com/8yh3w
http://tinyurl.com/7wmvy

1. RealVNC login
2. RealVNC ctrl-alt-delete

And the answer is…

Just send it “Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Delete” which worked for me.

Alternativelly you can right-click on the RealVNC title bar for your session and select “send Ctrl-Alt-Del”