PC Anywhere Clone - Freeware / Shareware

[Tazman]

Does anyone have a link to a PC Anywhere clone proggie that is pretty simple to set up on the host and client computers? I have a dental account and he wants to be able to access his computers from home (without having to buy a program ).

Here's his office setup:

4 600MHz Celerons networked w/ cat 5 and a 8 port Kingston hub. The server is the only box with a modem and there is not any ISP (makes Windows updates difficult but then, talk about secure). All of the computers are running Win98SE.

It's been well over 8 years since I even played with PC Anywhere and I kinda remember it being a pain to configure so the easier, the better. I'm sure I can figure it out but the dentist is the first to admit that he is ignorant when it comes to computers so if I keep it simple that will keep the late night phone calls to me to a minimal .

Thanks in advance and I have more info if needed.

Mike

I don';t know what features PC Anywhere has, as I've never used it, but if you want a simple app that can remotely connect to a clinet and display graphics card output and control keyboard and mouse movements, check out VNC. It's free, reasonably simple to install and use, and doesn't seem to use much resources on the host.
Works for me to monitor my UD cows, anyway!
Hope it works for you, Mike!

edit:Actually not sure if this will work as it needs a separate IP addy to access for each PC. Not sure if it will work though the internal net over the internet. Try it though - it is free!

[Tazman]

mickwish -

That's a pretty cool little program. I just d\l'ed and installed it. It's kinda scarey - I suddenly have this power complex like I can control everything (evil laugh) .

I didn't have any problems installing it over my LAN and minipulating files on another computer - even with Zone Alarm. Question though, I can't copy a file from one computer to the other can I? Or does any changes only stay on the computer I'm viewing. It also seemed really slow on the display from one computer to another (might be that the computer I was accessing has a screen reslolution of 1280x1024 and the one I was on was 1024x768 and I was in full screen mode - doh!).

I'm not sure if I'll be able to configure it to use a dial-up. I'll give it a shot later. I'll have to run some phone lines and disconnect my LAN to see if it'll work. I'm not hopeful only because it would seem that the host computer will always have to have a dial-up connection established to be accessed (I would think). Still - a very useful ap for me - thanks!

Mike

[kenyg]

You can't copy files with VNC, but it's a great help if you need to, say download files to a remote machine.

It's can also be great fun on a lan, I took control of my wife's, pc once, had her thinking it was possessed for a few...


Ken

[jman01pa]

Here is a quote from VNC and it will allow control over the Net.

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures

From thr VNC FAQ's:

Q9 How do I set up a Windows 95/98 machine so that I can dial into it directly and view it using VNC?

You need to install your modem from the control panel if you haven't already, and you need to set up the dialup networking server on your server machine. (This is included with Win98 and NT4. On Win95 it is in the Plus! pack, but you need to get an update to version 1.3 or later from Microsoft's site. At the time of writing it can be found here.) You can enable the dialup server from the 'Connections' menu of the dial-up networking window. If it isn't there, or if you've updated the dialup networking as mentioned above, you need to install it using the Windows Setup section of 'Add/Remove Programs' in the control panel. When it's running and you've dialled in, the server machine should have an IP address something like 192.168.55.1 as seen from the viewer - you can find this out by hovering over the VNC server icon, using 'netstat -r', or running winipcfg. You should then be able to connect to, for example, 192.168.55.1:0.

VNC is reasonabble straight forward to use, but does have it tricks. If you have static IPaddresses, it's easy to configure it to look for the client.

Hope this helps

Also:

Originally posted by Tazman
Question though, I can't copy a file from one computer to the other can I?

As noted by others, not using VNC - but if you control a PC through VNC, and you have Windows Networking installed, you can use those features to enable file sharing and then just drag/drop files into the appropriate network drive. That's how I remotely manage my kids files from my study - I use VNC to connect to their desktop, then use their desktop to access their Network Neighbourhood and drop files into my PC's drive (or vice versa). It allows me to download programs onto my PC's hard drive from the net, then install them onto their PC's at a later date from their own desktops, all without leaving my desk! Cool I reckon!

[Tazman]

'Kay, I've been playing with this for the last few hours and I'm starting to get pi$$ed. I'm not a guru when it comes to networking - probably should just start a new thread in the Network forum but I'll give this a quick shot.

I setup VCN on two boxes both running WinME with each unplugged from my LAN and each on a seperate phone line. I can't seem to get the computers to answer the call. I've got the computer that I want to connect to in "listening mode" and the other computer will dial out, the phone will ring but VCN won't answer . As I said, I'm a moron to setting up a dial-up server and seem to figure out how to do it in ME. I even pulled out my 98 resource book, wiped an inch of dust off of it but there isn't anything useful in it to help with ME's connection. Any thoughts?

Mike

edit - gonna post in Internet and Networking

[TOAD6147]

So, you have to install this to the 'client' and the 'server'? I suppose that if I'm running the ECCp Trinux floppy-based client then this is not going to help me, right?

There may be a way to use it with *nix floppy based OSes. VNC is mainly used to see *nix servers from win systems, or vice versa, so it may be possibe. Check the VNC FAQ's carefully to see if they mention it.