Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

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Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:25:18 GMT

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re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

ravindra106 — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:40:33 GMT

yes its hard to pick one feature as favorite in windows vista,because all of them quite amazing.

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

ed-matthews — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:12:17 GMT

I'm a huge fan of Remote Assistance, and have used it numerous times to help family and friends fix their systems.

However, I recently had to use it to support a Vista machine, and UAC made it very painful. The problem is that when the UAC pop-up occurs, my screen goes black, and I have to ask my family member to click on the OK button so the session can continue. The first time it happened I thought the remote system had crashed or hung up.

So, here's hoping we can get a solution - I don't mind the UAC pop-ups, but I just want to be able to see them, and "OK" them remotely.

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

Michael_Moor — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:06:23 GMT

Hey "Jim Allchin",thx for share

---------

http://www.dl4all.com

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

Mary — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 01:08:13 GMT

"For Windows Vista, we added the ability to cross NAT firewalls..."

Remote Assistance over NAT sounds like a dream, but I wonder what this will do to security in the long run. guess you've got that covered.

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

Caveman — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:16:32 GMT

I realise that this comment is not on the subject... but...Jim.... what about "Browser Shield" why hasn't microsoft released it?

From what little info there is about it on the microsoft website I feel that it "clean up" the opposition, and make IE7 the only browser to use.

Can you tell me anything more about it ?

NAP Update for Vista, XP, Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn Server

Network Access Protection (NAP) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:27:04 GMT

I haven't blogged in a while, so I wanted to give everyone a NAP "update". First, Windows Vista is going

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

r3m0t — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:34:41 GMT

ajr1: WinFS is dead for a long, long time.

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

bluvg — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:16:10 GMT

Thanks for the response, John! I definitely will check out Remote Assistance in Vista--I'm looking forward to it.

I can totally understand regarding the privacy and security concerns--particularly when it comes to consumer-oriented Vista editions. However, could this be implemented as a domain-joined-only feature, or something specific to businesses? Perhaps a downloadable version with the option to turn off the prompts could be made available to businesses, or maybe even as an add-on to SMS? Or perhaps it could be an installable option for Vista Enterprise users? We are already aware of the security concerns when it comes to SMS, but I think if you limit this ability as a configurable, default-turned-off option only usable by authenticated admins or an SMS account, it would be fine. We are still stuck using Remote Control and would ***gladly*** switch to Remote Assistance if this option were available!

Please, give that scenario some thought. :)

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

John Thekkethala — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:22:22 GMT

As Program Manager for Remote Assistance (RA) in Windows Vista I am thrilled to see all our cool new features come to fruition. If you have not used RA in Windows Vista – you simply have to check it out. NAT traversal using Teredo/IPv6 is a huge win for home users wanting to make Vista to Vista connections from behind home based routers. The new RA is a standalone program (msra.exe) with command line parameters which make it a lot easier to customize. The new RA user interface is crisp and clean and the app has been fine tuned to optimize bandwidth usage. You will find it a whole lot snappier in its response when compared to XP. In response to bluvg’s post on being able to make an RA connection without the user’s permission, this is something we debated at length and decided that it would be a major privacy and security concern and therefore opted not to implement it.

Also, check out the integration of RA with Windows Live Messenger.

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

ajr1 — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:03:51 GMT

Hey,

I give credit where its due, and ive been using vista for a while now during the beta, its an immense step forward for windows, and it really takes things to the next level.

Granted WinFS was pulled but hey wait until vienna is released.

Remote assistance is one area of the OS that had the potential to be huge, but it wasnt implemented very well, and its irritating that Microsoft didnt configure it for NAT in XP - its like how many people are now behind routers or have some form of firewall to negotiate, whoever was in research at the time should be shot.

Secondly bandwidth issues made the software pretty unusable sometimes, other services such as VNC were much faster and less resource dependant.

Its nice to see Microsoft taking an incredibly useful feature and finally making it really useable for us Windows Customers, i do have one question Jim, Please tell me that when a user wants to start a RAS (Remote Assistance Session) that they arent going to have to "Ok" seventy-billion UAC (User Account Control) Prompts.

One feature i suggest is having a "Trusted" user area, where trusted members can auto-launch RAS and be straight in.

RTM Nov 30th Guys :P

Ajr1

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

wolfgangt — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:07:25 GMT

Hi,

my server and the family clients are well configured so I don't need Remote Access. The better way is that all people who use a computer have learnde what they are doing and the OS is very user friendly. With Windows Vista that's my meaning it's a step backward. In IE7 you cant use Outlook Express (Mail) as Newsreader and Outlook as Mailreader together because there is only one Icon or link for email reading. The command 'copy to' and 'move to' is gone away in the Partition window. The hardware use is too expensiv and so on.

Is Windows Vista really a big step forward ?

Wolfgang Tietze

(sry for my bad schoool english it's 35 years ago I have learned it at teh school)

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

bluvg — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:45:08 GMT

I like Remote Assistance a lot, but have ended up using the SMS Remote Control feature for a number of reasons. First, in XP, it just took too long to start up and get connected (my hardware is a little older), provided you could make the connection.

At my company, though, we would love to use it as a replacement for the SMS Remote Control function, but we have not been able to do so. The reason is that Remote Assistance causes far too many user prompts before the support staff can start fixing the problem--and there is no way to configure it differently so that these prompts don't appear (GPO or otherwise).

Consider this--a user is in a panic about a file that they lost right before a client meeting. They call the help desk and need help *now*. The dialog goes something like this:

Helpdesk: I'm going to start a Remote Assistance session, ok?

User: Sure.

Helpdesk: Please OK it so I can start the Remote Assistance session.

User: OK what? Hey, I'm kinda in a hurry here. Can't you just come to my desk?

Helpdesk: I'll try to fix this as fast as I can, but I'm in another building, so this will be much faster. There should be a dialog that should be on your display right now.

User: What dialog? Please, hurry! I have a client meeting in like 1 minute!

Helpdesk: It should pop up on your display.

User: Oh, you mean this message that popped up a minute ago?

Helpdesk: Yes, please OK it so I can start the Remote Assistance session.

User: Ok. Hey, now I've got a phone call coming in, too--can you give me a second?

Helpdesk: I just need you to OK a couple more things so I can start fixing the problem--you should see a dialog on your screen right now for giving me remote control. Please ok it.

User: Hey, I just got another pop-up. Is this from you? Should I ok it? Hey, I really gotta grab this call, just fix it while I'm on the phone, ok? (Click.)

Helpdesk: Grrr... I hate Remote Assistance....

With Remote Control, the helpdesk person just clicks on it, and they're in control--it saves about a minute of frustration for both the support person and for the end user, which really is a significant savings in those situations. Please tell me they are adding this as at least a configurable option in Vista! :) If not, I really hope the SMS Remote Control function still works with Vista....

re: Saving the Day with Remote Assistance

newscientist2000 — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:34:15 GMT

I use remote assistance all the time from MSN messenger to maintain my parents computer in the UK from my house in the USA. Usually my family calls me up on the telephone and tells me their computer is acting up after installing program X, I then connect to their desktop machine via MSN Messenger and take control :-). It's so much easier to just take control and solve their problem than take them step by step through each action. Remote assistance is a lifesaver for me :-)

My family likes me more because of it to as it means they can talk to me about friends and family while I am tinkering with their machine, as oppossed to talking about the "location of the Control Panel?".

The only fault I have is that sometimes the changes I make require a reboot of the computer and then I have to get my family to turn MSN Messenger back on after a reboot and restart remote assistance.

However Remote Assistance is one of my favourite feautures of Windows by far, video messaging being my first.

In other news I just downloaded the Zune Theme for Windows XP and its pretty cool looking

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078

Keep up the good work.