Remote Desktop

stragglebod

You can set Teamviewer up so that only people on a whitelist can remotely log in to the machine.

Andy_L

jbainbridge said:

TeamViewer - simple. You email the other person a link to the QuickSupport download. They give you the ID and password. You connect in.

Remote Desktop is completely unsuitable.

Why?

neilmcl

Thanks all.

Went with Teamviewer and worked perfectly without issue. One thing though, when using teamviewer there were a couple of instances where I had to reinstall some software which meant my dad then had to take back control of the desktop due to admin permissions but I wasn't then able to take over control again and I couldn't see anything to allow me to do so. In the end I had to disconnect and start another remote session. Any ideas?

Neil_Jones

neilmcl said:

Thanks all.

Went with Teamviewer and worked perfectly without issue. One thing though, when using teamviewer there were a couple of instances where I had to reinstall some software which meant my dad then had to take back control of the desktop due to admin permissions but I wasn't then able to take over control again and I couldn't see anything to allow me to do so. In the end I had to disconnect and start another remote session. Any ideas?

If your dad's account is an administrator account (which they are by default) there is nothing to stop you responding to the UAC prompts.  It just may take a second or two to refresh at your end before you can see it.

That being said if the machine was rebooted it's plausible that the Teamview ID generated has changed between sessions.  You can avoid this in the future by setting up a Teamviewer acccount and adding your dad's computer as a "contact", and then giving yourself Easy Access.  That way it doesn't matter what the ID is after a reboot, because your account will always be able to find it.

neilmcl

Neil_Jones said:

neilmcl said:

Thanks all.

Went with Teamviewer and worked perfectly without issue. One thing though, when using teamviewer there were a couple of instances where I had to reinstall some software which meant my dad then had to take back control of the desktop due to admin permissions but I wasn't then able to take over control again and I couldn't see anything to allow me to do so. In the end I had to disconnect and start another remote session. Any ideas?

If your dad's account is an administrator account (which they are by default) there is nothing to stop you responding to the UAC prompts.  It just may take a second or two to refresh at your end before you can see it.

I never got the UAC prompts at my end, also he's not the administrator, I have an admin account on that laptop so I had to give him my password for him to proceed. Which was fine but I couldn't see anywhere where I could then regain control of the desktop.

Neil_Jones

Something's wrong somewhere then because even if the account is a Limited acccount and you try to install something you should still get a UAC prompt asking for the credentials of an Administrator account, which you can supply over a Teamviewer session.

You shouldn't lose control of the machine over Teamviewer just because of you need access to the other account, that sort of defeats the whole point of this sort of software.  Best educated guess is that the connection dropped or the software on your dad's machine stopped working for whatever reason.

neilmcl

Neil_Jones said:

Something's wrong somewhere then because even if the account is a Limited acccount and you try to install something you should still get a UAC prompt asking for the credentials of an Administrator account, which you can supply over a Teamviewer session.

You shouldn't lose control of the machine over Teamviewer just because of you need access to the other account, that sort of defeats the whole point of this sort of software.  Best educated guess is that the connection dropped or the software on your dad's machine stopped working for whatever reason.

He does get the UAC prompt but I can't see it or respond to it my end, my session just freezes up whilst he responds to the prompt and I can't seem to get control back again. We tried it about 3 times and the same thing happened each time.

DoaM

Does TV need to be installed with admin privileges at the client end? Or (if it gets installed as admin anyway) does it need to run with admin privileges at the client end? (For such issues to be avoided).

Neil_Jones

DoaM said:

Does TV need to be installed with admin privileges at the client end? Or (if it gets installed as admin anyway) does it need to run with admin privileges at the client end? (For such issues to be avoided).

Having looked into this, it seems to be that this is the case.  Teamviewer requires the account its running on on the remote machine to be part of the administrator group.

However some legacy posts from a few years ago seems to imply that if you use the "full" version of Teamviewer (ie not the Quick Support one), you should now have full access regardless of what permiss set up on the remote computer.

neilmcl

DoaM said:

Does TV need to be installed with admin privileges at the client end? Or (if it gets installed as admin anyway) does it need to run with admin privileges at the client end? (For such issues to be avoided).

Something to bear in mind for the next time.