Remote administration

Netmeeting V3 comes with win2k clients as standard. You might have to add itif the default install did not. You then need to do the following as the admin user or equivalent on all your win2k clients. Under Accessories - Netmeeting, set it up by going thru the wizard. Don't connect to any catalogue servers, or any other stuff, enter any old data into the user name and email address. Set connection type as LAN. Basically just get thru the wizard any way you can, you are not using the app for collaborative reasons, just remote control. Then netmeeting will start. Then AS ADMIN select the option from the Tools menu - remote desktop sharing. This will run another wizard. Say no to the screen saver stuff, then finish. One more step, go to the Call menu and select the last option on the menu - Exit and activate remote desktop sharing. Thats all there is to it.

On your task bar in the tray (bottom right) you will see the icon indicating that netmeeting is running. When a non-admin user islogged in, the options they see when right clicking the tray icon are enable (or disable) remote desktop sharing. Generally leave it disabled as it is a security hole. Let the user select to enable it when required. When running, the user has no control over the machine, unlike PCAnywhere or such. However, the price is absolutely right and I even use it over the WAN.

stand by for part 2.

When you start up Netmeeting on your PC, select call - new call - then enter the IP address of the user you want to get to. This is necessary if you don't use a catalogue server, which you can do later if you like how netmeeting works. You can use it to transfer files as well. You must select the "use security" checkbox - I haven't made it work any other way. This means you must supply an admin user/password when connecting. I use the relevant domain admin account myself.

You are asking - how do I know the IP address of the end station I want to connect to? If you are using dhcp, you will need the user to tell you first. I have a batch file I drop on their desktop called my-ip.bat (or similar) and it goes a little like this-

ipconfig
pause.

So, you call the user and ask them to enable remote sharing (by right clicking the tray icon) then click the my-ip icon and read their address back to you. If your addresses are static, even easier. You then go into Netmeeting and selectCall - new call (with security) and that is it. I did see wierd locking problems at first where the scree would freeze on my end. Pulling up task manager via the keyboard then killing another non-relevant task(like an instance of explorer for instance) got my mouse back. SP2 has greatly improved the whole operation of it. For previous versions of windows you can download the latest v3.x of it for your other boxes. Win95 needs Explorer 5 (minimum) installed for it to work, like most of the new apps.

Hope this helps, there are articles on this site covering the same thing, but this is the cut-down version that works. After you do 1 or 2 you should be able to set up a client in about 5 minutes (or get the trainee to do them).

Bon Appetit (PS - the whole answer wouldn't fit in one response, in case your'e wondering.

You may need to clarify a bit. Did you have remote registry enabled, etc? If you have 2000, it is already ready for you to connect to your clients' registry through the network. Maybe you can tell us more specifically what you are trying to accomplish?

I agree, netmeeting is definitely a great tool, but sometimes, just connecting with the Computer Management tool to other workstations is a bit easier (to manage shares, services, etc.) to use.

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