I need to provide remote assistance to the users of my app, through the Internet. I need a reference for doing this, and I need to make the whole connecting to remote desktop process as easy as clicking a menu of my app for my users.
I don't want them to get too involved with the procedure. I believe the built-in remote assistance features of Windows XP and Vista are fine, I just need to make it very simple.
Anyone any ideas?
P.S. A comprehensive reference on the whole Windows Remote Assistance would also be appreciated.
I highly recommend Mikogo. It's free, fast to install and setup, works great, and is very simple. I actually prefer it to the more expensive services ($30-$40/month) because of it's simplicity. Only thing is, I'm not sure how they make money, they have some advertising when you visit the home page, but it's very minimal.
There are many commercial tools that do make this operation effortless. I won't mention any names because this isn't an advertising forum. A quick search should turn up a handful of possibilities; I've used many of the more popular ones and found them satisfactory.
Our support desk typically uses WebEx which works really well.
There are a large number of tools which will do this. Your best is to pick a tool which has a reverse connection from the person who needs help back to the helper. This will make sure that you do not have users try and configure firewalls/open ports etc. Webex is a good recommendation by Old Nick. Another option is GotoAssist, there is also Gotomeeting which can have the same remote control functionality and is cheaper i believe. The main thing is making sure it is as easy as it can be for your users, trying to walk a user through installing an active-x control can be hard enough.
I'd suggest trying LogMeIn. It's nice because once you have the user set up the client software, you can arrange with them a time to leave their PC unattended so that you can remote in and take a look (with the option to disable local keyboard/mouse and monitor access). You can also connect such that the local peripherals are enabled and watch "over their shoulder" as they replicate a problem.
There is of course also Copilot by Fog Creek. Have never used it myself, but it looks pretty easy to use, also for non-technical people.
I use CrossLoop for that kind of thing
Related
just a question, is a good idea to host machines with HyperV on a DC?
This is my Idea.
if the answer is no, can you explain why?
Thanks
Have a nice day
First of all, your question doesn't seem to be related to programming in any way and should hence be considered off topic for SO. Server Fault would probably be a more suitable place for (the question is somewhat old by now as well and you might already have found the info you need but I've flagged it for the moderators to perhaps consider a move from SO to SF or have it closed altogether).
Secondly, as for your question;
Generally no, it's not a good idea but there could be ifs and buts to everything I guess.
For a smaller company with perhaps only the one existing server (and no budget to add machines or get professional help to make any bigger changes to their current setup) which also happenes to be their DC, I guess it all comes down to what kind of workload the DC is under to begin with and just what will be hosted in Hyper-V. I'd personally still recommend against it though.
It's not a good idea as it's not a supported scenario from MS. I don't even know if server manager lets you install both.
You can host a VM with AD, but depending on your setup (cluster/HyperV in domain or not, ...) you really should add an AD physical server (even a very small one) for hyper-V to authenticate his services against when your AD VM has not started. It can save you a lot of time...
I am working on building a system that can monitor how users react to security alerts on their systems (software updates, warnings etc.). It also needs to monitor the web traffic and the processes running on the system and I am looking to the community to help me design this system. We intend to provide users with test laptops and monitor their behavior over a period of time to see how they react to security alerts thrown by various applications and the OS(windows in this case).
Following are my questions
Can I use windows hooks to solve the first problem i.e finding how users reacted to the alerts thrown by various applications. Specifically, can global hooks be used to solve this?
(How this information should be collected (XML?) and relayed back to a server(how frequently?) is another problem)
Can I do this in C# or it has to be done only in c++ or VB?
Do you know any alternate approach to solve the problem? Is there any software that has these capabilities.
I have many more questions but getting these answered would be a good first step. Really hoping for some good insights from the knowledgeable people on this community
Thank you in advance
Edit:
Example scenario is when adobe prompts you to update the flash player or the antivirus prompts you to update definitions or any application displays a notification(security related having keywords like update, warning, install etc.) needing the user to take some action. Windows system updates is another example. I want to know how the user reacted to these alerts/notifications/updates (which are typically a pop-up window). So i was wondering if i placed a global hook that can monitor the content of the windows displayed on screen and notify me(server) when certain words like update, alert, warning etc. appear in the content/title of the windows and what the user did with the message(dismissed it, Oked it etc). Unfortunately, i do not have any more specifications than this. I can use anything I want to achieve this and I am not clear on what my choices are.
Edit 2:
After having reviewed my requirements and having read about hooks, I feel like I could achieve this by a combination of hooks and the following textGrab SDK, http://www.renovation-software.com/en/text-grab-sdk/textgrab-sdk.html. I want some guidance to know if I am on the right track. I am thinking if I can install hooks then it gives me handles to all possible windows on the screen and I can use the textGRAB SDK to look for certain keywords in those windows. Although this may capture some interesting text, I am still not sure how I will know what action the user had taken on the window. Anybody having any experience with either hooks or textGRAB, please let me know if this looks like a reasonable thing to do. If the community has some other Ideas on how I could possibly monitor security related messages thrown by any application in the system, please suggest. I am looking forward to some useful advice for completing a challenging project.
First of all, you need to define, how you will "see" security alerts in code. "Security alert" is quite a vague term. Will it be some window with some caption and some message to the user or ... ?
Next, about web and processes: Windows hooks won't help you with your task. They are more low-level and not as advanced as you'd need. You can't hook network traffic (you need either network filter driver for pre-Vista or Microsoft Filtering Platform for Vista and later). See this question for some information about checking the process list with C# (there seems to be no easy way to catch process startup either).
It honestly sounds like you need a more solid direction. I commend you for trying to provide details, but It appears that you still need more information about your problem(s)..
I will attempt to answer some of your questions, but like I said - it sounds like you need to know more about your problems before we can provide you with optimal answer(s).
-Alerts is too vague a term, you will need to define this better. Are these 'alerts' applications that YOU have control over or are they third party applications? Not every application will show an 'Alert' in the same fashion, and even if they did - I think using a System Level Hook would probably be too problematic to implement your solution with. I'm not saying it's necessarily impossible, but you're talking about possibly implementing a different set of logic(to determine the data for a given application's Alert(s)) for each application that you want to monitor.
-It's impossible for any of us to determine the optimal storage mechanism for your particular needs, that is something that you will either need to provide more details about or decide on your own.
-How often you collect data is also something that you will have to either provide more details for or decide for on your own.
-C/C++ Would probably provide you with the most portable solution, although there is nothing preventing you from using c# to call Win32 API. (Not everyone has the .NET framework installed - believe it or not)
-The problem that you mentioned appears to be a somewhat specialized problem... I don't know of any existing software that will do everything that you want to do.
Another possible issue that you haven't touched on:
You haven't specified your target audience for this 'service', but I want you to know that if I found an application monitoring as many events as what you're talking about doing, I would promptly remove it and write a nasty letter to the company that wrote it.
In summary, Read this Article on hooks to get a better understanding of how they work.
I know blocking a website is a popular question but none of the answers I've seen address my particular situation:
I want to block a website (to be selected by the user, which must also have Admin rights, on Windows XP), without forcing her to restart her browser.
The well known technique of modifying the hosts file requires some browsers to be restarted. I want to accomplish that in a way that is browser-independent (e.g. Content Advisor works in IE but not in FF) and which doesn't require the user to restart his browser.
Please note that I am interested in knowing how to do this programmatically, so http://superuser.com or http://serverfault.com aren't really the right places for this question, as they mostly suggest tools and services, while I am interested in the underlying knowledge so that I can implement it myself.
Ideas?
Thanks.
Please note that I am interested in
knowing how to do this
programmatically, so
http://superuser.com or
http://serverfault.com aren't really
the right places for this question, as
they mostly suggest tools and
services, while I am interested in the
underlying knowledge so that I can
implement it myself.
Such tools would filter traffic by implementing a NDIS Intermediate Driver. See also this other question.
I am looking for a good, free (preferred) screen sharing program that works well for pair programming and code review sessions for Windows (Vista x64, Server 2008). It should allow either person take control of the screen and be fairly responsive for text editing over decent broadband connections. Additional features like the ability to draw/mark/annotate the other persons screen would be nice.
Edit: This will be used by developers in remote locations.
TeamViewer from http://www.teamviewer.com/ works very well. We use it for pair programming between London and Ukraine.
Notes:
We use Skype for voice.
TeamViewer uses extremely low bandwidth - 4kbyte/sec on average for programming in Visual Studio 2008 # 1024x768 resolution.
Can swap roles from hotseat to viewer with a button.
The remote view of the screen can be resized to fit in a smaller area with no loss in usability.
Windows Shared View works for me. It allows you to only share certain windows and even shows where your "attendees" mouse is. It would be best to use that in connection with some sort of voip connection so that you don't have to type questions/responses back and forth.
I have checked some hours now for a good one.
Best and the simplest thing i have found.
http://www.screenleap.com/
Free, no strings found so far.
No need to waste time installing or registering anything.
Works perfect with "share are only" if you have multimontor setup.
Most other software shares full screen default, and you cannot choose which monitor you share.
You need to be aware that it does not encrypt data. Check FAQ.
But if you have to run voice over Skype/Mymble/Whatever separate anyway..
What harm can a hacker do by simply getting 50% of the conference ?
Pff.. Oh you wished for screen sharing.. this one does not have it.
So try: http://www.mingleview.com/
It has that multimonitor "bug" and you need to install a simple pluginlike thing.
But "take control" is there and it's very simple also.
Most other software has bundled unneccesary functions like calendaring, document system, filesharing which i already have solutions for.
It's like developing games on excel macros..
unneccesary.. developers please learn that already !
I haven't actually tried it yet, but it looks promising. Check out DimDim. They have a free web service and a VMWare image on Sourceforge.
If you're using eclipse, you might wanna try ECF. There's a video presentation available here.
Try Mikogo at www.mikogo.com
very easy to setup. no problems with Firewalls etc etc
And my final suggestion, but this is not one I've tried. Go to Crossloop
On OSX, I've used vim and a multi-user GNU screen session - this gives much better responsiveness than VNC, screen-sharing, etc. I guess you could use these with Cygwin?
I like to use Screen Hero, which allows both users to use the mouse on the shared screen: http://screenhero.com/
or Zoom: http://zoom.us/
For a poor-man's solution, you can use the free edition of RealVNC. On the server, un-check all of these boxes:
(source: realvnc.com)
Would a VNC client not do the trick, combined with a one of those screen overlay apps people use for presentations (screenpen rings a bell)?
Another option is to use VNC, but use reverse connections. Have a look at this I use this in conjunction with No-IP to get a fixed address.
Do you need this to be remote?
You could just have two monitors set to mirror and 2 USB keyboards/mice
If it is remote then VNC is the way to go, I would use UltraVNC if you are looking for a free version, it has more features (chat, file transfer) than the free version of VNC - it also has a video driver hook that means it suffers less from any weird screen issues than regualr VNC.
If firewalls are a problem you can simply set up a VPN (which is probably a good idea anyway - although ultra can do encryption).
How about any of the services like Joel's https://www.copilot.com/?
Have you looked at the collaboration module that comes with netbeans? Its very useful for pair programming!
For multi-platform simplicity, I would suggest
https://join.me/ for screen share (you can even view a remote
screen using iOS!)
getting a phone headset, and using the phone for audio.
What do the clever programmers here do to keep track of handy programming tricks and useful information they pick up over their many years of experience? Things like useful compiler arguments, IDE short-cuts, clever code snippets, etc.
I sometimes find myself frustrated when looking up something that I used to know a year or two ago. My IE favorites probably represent a good chunk of the Internet in the late 1990s, so clearly that isn't effective (at least for me). Or am I just getting old?
So.. what do you do?
Two Things I do:
I blog about it - this allows me to go back and search my own blog.
We use the code snippet feature in Visual Studio.
Cheers.
I use:
Google Notebook - I take notes for projects, books I'm reading, etc
Delicious + Firefox plug in - Every time I see a good page I mark it.
Windows Journal (in tablet pc) - When I need to draw something and then copy/cut/paste it. I have more distractions here, the web is always very close :)
Small Moleskine paper notebook - Its always with me.
Big paper notebook - When I need more space to write and less distractions.
Obviously these are for all useful information, not just for snippets or tips and tricks.
Why not set up a Wiki?
If you are on windows, i know that ScrewTurn wiki is pretty simple to deploy on a desktop/laptop. No database to fuss around with.
Blog about it.
One of the nice side-effects of blogging is that if you use a sensible categorization or tagging system, it's quite easy to search for stuff within your blog. The fact that you wrote about it also makes it easier to remember problems you have encountered before ("hey, I blogged about that!").
That's a great benefit aside from, of course, being able to share this information publicly so that others might be able to find your solution to a particular problem using Google.
A number of people I know swear by Google Notebook
I send them to my gmail account, that way I have them where ever I go, and they can be put into appropriate folders for later.
I second the blog about it technique...even Jeff said that's a major reason he blogs.
Also, regarding the wiki idea, if you set one up at work, be sure to encourage your coworkers to do the same. When someone finds something of interest they can just write a little "article" explaining what it is and how to do it... that way, not only are your own things easily available and quickly searchable, but you'll often find out things you never knew from other people in your group. That way it benefits everyone not just you.
I agree with emailing, the wiki and the blog. Emailing is the most useful. If you can't use GMail and you're on windows, install a desktop search utility (Windows search, Google Desktop, Copernic, etc)
I also like to jot it into a textfile and save it in my documents folder. Whatever desktop search utility you use will be able to find it easily. e.g.
//print spool stop.notes.txt
If the printer spooler stops, start it again by
- Services > Provision Networks > Restart Service
tags: printer provision no printer spooler cannot print remote desktop
Subscribe in Google Reader and then search later.
At my last place of work they wouldn't let me set up a wiki or anything - so I just made various word documents full of tips and instructions and gave that to my successor when I left.
Now though I'd use a private wiki, or maybe a blog.
For many years I've kept a Word doc named Knowledgebase.doc that contains all my notes with a decent table of contents. I like to keep everything in one searchable doc.
I use a sync tool to make sure the file is copied to all the machines I want it on.
I use TiddlyWiki stored in my DropBox account. Although, recently, Evernote is getting my atention; it has a really useful feature: you send a twitter direct message to evernote user (myen) and it adds a note with your message (a really quick way to add notes or URL's for post-processing). Imagine, you can use a command-line twitter client to create notes! (or any twitter client). I really like this feature.