How many of you geeks support a not so knowledgeable relative or friend? I’ve done it a lot, and there are several difficulties I have:

1. My ear gets sore from pressing the phone to it; or
2. I get frustrated because the other person has trouble doing what I’m telling them to; or
3. I have to tell them how to configure their router so I can Remote Assistance/Remote Desktop into their computer and I’m not intimately familiar with their brand and model of router to tell them where to open up the ports and what that manufacturer calls that setting.

Why not use Remote Desktop or Remote Assistance? Those are OK for a one time thing - but they don’t have strong authentication and are subject to ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks. I have a solution for you - and it’s FREE. It’s UltraVNC over Hamachi.

Hamachi is:

“A UDP-based virtual private networking system. Its peers utilize the help of a third node called a mediation server to locate each other and to bootstrap the connection between them. The connection itself is direct and once it is established no traffic flows through our servers.” “Hamachi is secure. All Hamachi communications are encrypted and authenticated with industry-standard algorithms and protocols. Nobody will be able to see what two Hamachi peers are talking about. Not even us.”

“However, what is equally important - Hamachi security architecture is completely open meaning that its detailed description is available to anyone interested for review and validation.” [Source: Hamachi]

Hamachi configuration is easy. Install it on your computer. Set up your network with its 5.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address. For a secure password, go to GRC’s secure password generator here. Now have your supportee install Hamachi and have them join your network.

Install UltraVNC. It has a server component (this goes onto the computer you’re supporting) and a viewer component (this goes onto your computer). The default settings usually work fine. The hardest part will be configuring the server component on your supportee’s computer - you will have to have a password set in UltraVNC AND on the remote computer. There has to be a logon password set in Windows BEFORE you install UltraVNC.

If the remote computer doesn’t have a password set and logs on automatically then any password you set in UltraVNC won’t be retained after a restart. How to set or change a password in Windows XP — Setting up or changing passwords in Windows 2000

Now, start the UltraVNC viewer on your computer and - in the VNC Server box, type in the Hamachi IP address of the remote computer. Click on Connect. When the VNC Authentication dialog appears, type the VNC password in the Password box and click Log On. Voila! You can control their computer just as if you were sitting at that keyboard.

If you have any difficulties, a Hamachi Getting Started Guide is here and the forums page is here.

[tags]Hamachi, UltraVNC, remote support, security, troubleshoot, Remote Assistance, Remote Desktop[/tags]