so much help last time im back again begging

OK so if your interested in the back story read my last post hear in computer help...

My uncle has still been unable to find an affordable competent company that he feels is big enough to give him the support he needs and wont go with a one man show after what just happened to him...

he needs remote access to just 1 workstation his and ofcourse the ability to access the server which i assume if he gets to his station he should be able to remote to his station he should be able to log in as normal which would give him all normal permissions and rights....
so here is the kicker his previous I.T . guy already used every free software to give himself and a few users access... after they find out its a business they shut him right down so i convinced him to purchase software... went with RADMIN because when i did a search it came up in the top ten and price was affordable.. how they are in the top 10 i will never know.. i installed it took all the steps and it works when both his laptop and workstation are on the LAN
but as soon as we unplug laptop its no cigar...SO ofcourse i try support...no support phone number only one for sales.. so i submit a ticket..i get an email telling me for support i need to look for a person on skype.. the name was wrong but from the radmin forums i found a mod with a close name so i
looked him up ..his profile pick is a shirtless man doing yoga... needless to say i will be trying to get my uncle a refund..
i also tried to post some reviews to give other people a warning.. i have no idea how they managed to get the software on so many sites so highly rated..

ok without going any further into the story because i probably lost anyone that was willing to help by now anyway..

he has a sonicwall firewall is there anyway i can get him access and can someone walk me thru ...im sure there is away to create a VPN or something where he can just put his IP address into explorer,chrome,firefox get his desktop and log in ..i know the server has rdp and other options but i wouldnt know where to begin trying to set that up. I am looking for the simplest way possible for both him but mainly me ...please if anyone can help i would greatly appreciate it..

thanks again... i have been a member since 2010 but haven't spent much time recently i think all the doom and gloom started to make me a little nuts.

go to www.zerotier.com
register an account.
setup a network and subnet in your account. I like the 172.16.x.x/24 over 192 or 10, but its your call on that matter.
install client to your uncle's server and any other device requiring access. (works on windows vista+, 2008+, linux, android, iOS).
RDP as usual on a secure backplane network using the zerotier IP.

You may need to be sure the zerotier network on the server gets set to PRIVATE, and maybe tweak windows firewall. I dont know your exact config.

a reply to: drewlander

His workstation is running XP and im not sure what his laptop is running...

Thanks for the help i will have a look at it...

a reply to: navione

our business uses logmein.com

a reply to: LightAssassin

i wish that was at all possible teamviwer also. His previous I.T. guy left him in a lurch. I would say you get what you pay for and maybe my uncle should have went with a better company or person but some how some why this guy got recommended and got in the door ..charged my uncle 35 an hour no matter what it was that needed to be done... no receipts,no itemized bills nothing got paid cash.. i just dont know how he managed to keep everything running for 2 years before he ran into an issue he couldnt find a fix or work around for and disappeared...

i have some basic skills but its been a long time but i know that there has to be away to open up a vpn through the firewall.. i will figure it out i have until thursday when my uncle leaves on vacation.. i just feel real bad for him.. i know if he doesnt have access he will ruin his own vacation.. he has been in biz 35 years but the last 5 have been rough on him...

if he could have ran the biz without computers he would have kept it that way but times change and you got to change with it i guess...

a reply to: drewlander

I'll still offer some help only because your handle is from S.E.L., but your navi needs an upgrade -- XP?! Seriously?

Teamviewer is really good about locking down suspected business users. Not surprised by your comment. I think my connection on it drops after a half second and as counting down for reconnect something like 2 years down the road it stated last I tried. Im super banned from teamviewer I guess.

One big question Re: RADMIN is why you would choose that tool? Far back as I can recall R-Admin was mostly used by IT Admins to manage tons of connections to different VM while already inside the network ( generally not for WAN -> LAN connections ).

XP Home edition did not come with RDP if I recall correctly, so I assume it is Pro? This is not to say it cannot be done on Home Edition, but it was not meant to be. If its not pro, I would stop heading down that path immediately.

I believe Chrome will no longer work on XP, so Chrome Remote is not really an option.

Probably your best bet will be logmein Central or gotomypc (in that order). They still support your OS and whatever logmein uses is not as slow as that java applet gotomypc uses. on a resource deficient machine ( as I would expect for winXP) I would avoid java based remote access because java tends to be a pig.

One other note: If logmein is already installed by your old IT, you will need to remove, reboot, and reinstall, under your own account.

thx
-d

I'm a little confused about what you want.

If it's remote control of up to 10 computers you can use Remote Utilities, I have been using it for more than one year without any problems to connect to several computers, both at home and at work.

originally posted by: navione
OK so if your interested in the back story read my last post hear in computer help...

My uncle has still been unable to find an affordable competent company that he feels is big enough to give him the support he needs and wont go with a one man show after what just happened to him...

he needs remote access to just 1 workstation his and ofcourse the ability to access the server which i assume if he gets to his station he should be able to remote to his station he should be able to log in as normal which would give him all normal permissions and rights....
so here is the kicker his previous I.T . guy already used every free software to give himself and a few users access... after they find out its a business they shut him right down so i convinced him to purchase software... went with RADMIN because when i did a search it came up in the top ten and price was affordable.. how they are in the top 10 i will never know.. i installed it took all the steps and it works when both his laptop and workstation are on the LAN
but as soon as we unplug laptop its no cigar...SO ofcourse i try support...no support phone number only one for sales.. so i submit a ticket..i get an email telling me for support i need to look for a person on skype.. the name was wrong but from the radmin forums i found a mod with a close name so i
looked him up ..his profile pick is a shirtless man doing yoga... needless to say i will be trying to get my uncle a refund..
i also tried to post some reviews to give other people a warning.. i have no idea how they managed to get the software on so many sites so highly rated..

ok without going any further into the story because i probably lost anyone that was willing to help by now anyway..

he has a sonicwall firewall is there anyway i can get him access and can someone walk me thru ...im sure there is away to create a VPN or something where he can just put his IP address into explorer,chrome,firefox get his desktop and log in ..i know the server has rdp and other options but i wouldnt know where to begin trying to set that up. I am looking for the simplest way possible for both him but mainly me ...please if anyone can help i would greatly appreciate it..

thanks again... i have been a member since 2010 but haven't spent much time recently i think all the doom and gloom started to make me a little nuts.

OK, if he has a sonicwall, you can set up a VPN.

There are two ways to access a VPN, either have a fixed IP facing the Internet (set up by your ISP) or use a dynamic DNS registration (you can get some of these for free), basically a human readable DNS name which will return (most of the time) the dynamically changing internet IP address (there are IP resolution delays in DDNS and it can be less than 100% 'assured' but if you are patient and retry, it does work).

SonicWall has a freely downloadable VPN client (I think).

A VPN, however, is just a network connection. It won't give you a 'remote desktop' or a file system. For that you'll need some other stuff:

Once the VPN has put your PC's on the same network, you can connect to network 'shares' on the remote machine. Usually this will be with the "[machine name][backslash][Share name]" format (minus the quotes and square brackets and the 'backslash' is a singe character) but you will also usually have to supply a "[machine name][backslash][user name]" and password. Once the drive is 'mapped' it will usually persist so passwords & etc are a one-off. There are some hidden share names which are a system default, such as "C$" (without the quotes) the share for the C: drive and "D$" for the D: drive (and so on, through all drive letters allocated.

There are free softwares (such as VNC - RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC, etc) which can give you that 'remote desktop like experience' and are fairly OS agnostic. TeamViewer, for example is a VNC like software but is commercial for business use. You nomally run a server service on the remote PC and a client on the local PC. Sometimes they are the same executable but with different startup switches. On the remote end, it is good to run the server as a service so it starts with the PC and doesn't require a user logon first. Most VNC type softwares also have file transfer modes, too.

You could also set up remote desktop on Windows XP. You have to enable access (Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties. In the System Properties sheet, click the Remote tab. Select the Allow users to connect remotely to this computer check box). To run the remote desktop client that will connect with the remote machine, just use "MSTSC.msc" and put in the IP address of the remote machine on the VPN or use its NetBIOS name. You'll also have to use a logon that is administrator on the remote machine. On XP this is usually "[machine name][backslash][admin user name]" (don't include square brackets or quotes - and the 'backslash' is a single character which this ATS editor keeps removing if I try and type it "as is"). On XP home, there are a few rigmaroles for enabling remote desktop but Google is your friend.

My preference is to run Remote Desktop, connecting to the remote filesystem through Windows explorer and as a fallback contingency, a VNC server, too (because stuff happens and it's good to have two ways to access a remote machine).

a reply to: chr0naut

navione, hope you solved your issue by now, but if not....

revisiting this post and in review, I think I would do this the other way around. You said remote access to his workstation, then bounce to the server. Since the Server is running Windows Server 2012 ( according to your previous post), I would go back to my original statement and install zerotier on the server. From the server you can bounce to the workstation. No firewall rules or VPN. Just ZT client On the server and remote client ( Hopefully not another Windows XP machine). RDP shortcut on the remote workstation or laptop using the ZT IP Address. Remote desktop shortcut from server to workstation on LAN.

100% free. easy to install. very secure encryption.

thx
-d

Server 2012 comes with the "essentials" service. Very useful and has remote connect capabilities.

Since he's still on XP imma take a leap here... perhaps he has one or more of these laying around..

Convert Wireless Routers into Access Points

By Eric Geier

Don't throw out your old 802.11g gear just yet. Though 802.11n provides faster speeds and longer range, your aged legacy equipment can still serve a purpose.

As we'll discuss in this tutorial, old wireless routers can be turned into access points (APs); they can help increase the Wi-Fi footprint even more. Plus they might even help increase the performance of the 802.11n connections on your network.

...and here's this to be sure... AP - Access Point

Oh and since you asked...

how they are in the top 10 i will never know..

...in a nutshell... SEO

Good day!