Problem with XP Remote Assistance

Cadmium77 · May 20, 2006

OK, so I wanted to be able to access my home computer from my work computer, so I sent an remote assistance invitation by e-mail, (not messenger ) to my work computer's Outlook Epress. I wrote in a password and I made the invitation open ended until June 18. I then left my computer on and went to work. I went into Outlook Express at work and found the invitations'I'd sent myself. I opened the invitations and saw that the Remote Assistance invitation had arrived. I filled in and tried the password and then after 20 seconds received this message;

"Remote Assistance connection could not be established because the remote host name could not be resolved. Please try again."

What do you think I'm doing wong here?

Is the work firewall stopping the connection?

ErikD · May 20, 2006

Well first of all this isn't really the preferred way to connec to your home PC from work. Remote Desktop Connection would be the proper way as it is its intended purpose. No invatations or anything, you just connect and logon as if you were sitting there.

Anyway are you on a router or firewall on the home network? If so you will need to setup the proper ports to be forwareded to the IP of your PC. You should also set your PC at a static IP address.

Cadmium77 · May 20, 2006

ErikD said:
Well first of all this isn't really the preferred way to connec to your home PC from work. Remote Desktop Connection would be the proper way as it is its intended purpose. No invatations or anything, you just connect and logon as if you were sitting there.

Anyway are you on a router or firewall on the home network? If so you will need to setup the proper ports to be forwareded to the IP of your PC. You should also set your PC at a static IP address.

OK thanks, I'll try that instead. Yes, I'm on a Netgear router. Hopefully there'll be a wizard to guide me through it on XP?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/remoteintro.mspx#EIB

ErikD · May 20, 2006

No wizard. You will need to login to the routers admin page and configure it from there. Check with the manual for details, it isn't all that hard.

Just a few things to keep in mind:
1. You will need to setup a static IP on your PC at home
2. Forward the appropriate RDP ports to that PC
3. To connect from work you will need to use your ISP provided IP, not hostname. Your PC name isn't recognized as an internet routable name, so it will always return an error.

roYal · May 20, 2006

Btw, the RDP port is 3389. Netgear router will probably be accessible by going to http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1. I don't remember Netgear's default username and password. Prolly admin/admin or admin/password. From there, go into a section that will allow you to port forward a port to an ip. You'll want to do an ipconfig on your local machine. Start | Run | type cmd and hit ok | type ipconfig. Look at the ip and this is the ip that you'll be forwarding 3389 to. Basically what this means is whenever your router receives a packet coming in using port 3389, it'll forward that packet to the computer you chose based on the ip. When you're on the other side of the router (the internet), you'll need to use the public ip as another person said.

You'll also have to enable Remote Desktop which you'll need Windows XP Professional for. Windows XP Home does not have Remote Desktop support, only Remote Assistance. You can go right click my computer and choose properties. Click on the remote tab and enable Remote Desktop. Admin user accounts are automatically granted access to do remote desktop. If you are not an admin you can also be in the Remote Desktop Operator group. I'm assuming you're an admin so I wont explain the group adding thing.

Hope this helps.

Cadmium77 · May 20, 2006

roYal said:
Btw, the RDP port is 3389. Netgear router will probably be accessible by going to http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1. I don't remember Netgear's default username and password. Prolly admin/admin or admin/password. From there, go into a section that will allow you to port forward a port to an ip. You'll want to do an ipconfig on your local machine. Start | Run | type cmd and hit ok | type ipconfig. Look at the ip and this is the ip that you'll be forwarding 3389 to. Basically what this means is whenever your router receives a packet coming in using port 3389, it'll forward that packet to the computer you chose based on the ip. When you're on the other side of the router (the internet), you'll need to use the public ip as another person said.

You'll also have to enable Remote Desktop which you'll need Windows XP Professional for. Windows XP Home does not have Remote Desktop support, only Remote Assistance. You can go right click my computer and choose properties. Click on the remote tab and enable Remote Desktop. Admin user accounts are automatically granted access to do remote desktop. If you are not an admin you can also be in the Remote Desktop Operator group. I'm assuming you're an admin so I wont explain the group adding thing.

Hope this helps.

Yep...I had a talk with a friend at work and that was pretty much what he told me with a few details left out . Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.

ErikD · May 21, 2006

Also you will need to have the remote access account password protected or Windows won't let you connect remotely.

roYal · May 21, 2006

Yep, which can be changed easily by a group policy but definitely not recommended.

Problem with XP Remote Assistance

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