Comments on: Offer Remote Assistance in Windows XP Professional

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:46:43 +0000

Rob, your link is broken. I would love to take a look if you could update the link.

Thanks

By: Luis Caldeira

Luis Caldeira — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:32:10 +0000

Hello, thanks to the OP

Josh Goldberg you have already a tool to login when a user is not around. it is called remote desktop.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:36:04 +0000

Good stuff this Rob. Thanks for the credit!

By: Rob Dunn

Rob Dunn — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:55:45 +0000

I’ve taken the code that you and Daniel have put together and made it available as a download here:

http://www.vbshf.com/vbshf/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=323&start=1&posts=1

This will allow you to enter a computer name and then connect to a remote computer (pending it is not logged out) and open up a remote assistance connection, allowing you to take control with no user intervention on the remote end.

Thanks again to both of you for your great work!

Rob

By: Daniel Grundel

Daniel Grundel — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:27:45 +0000

Lewis, your post inspired me to create what I believe is an excellent remote assistance solution that gets about as close to VNC as possible. Have a look:
http://dgrundel.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/unsolicited-remote-assistance/

I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so give me a break on the posted code.

By: Unsolicited Remote Assistance « what i do when i’m supposed to be working

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:25:10 +0000

[...] gentleman I worked with sent me a link to an interesting article on Lewis Roberts’ blog about offering remote assistance.Â The article shows Lewis’ method for tweaking a couple files on theÂ client PC that will [...]

By: Meg

Meg — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:46:30 +0000

I got hold of Modified RA files that someone else created. Thanks, now I know how to create my own modified remote assistance files.
Here are two working scripts that copy modified files to a remote machine and initiates a remote assistance session and then removes those files. http://www.visualbasicscript.com/m_50614/tm.htm

By: Rob Dunn

Rob Dunn — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:31:22 +0000

I’ve been thinking of doing this, so I’ll probably modify Doug’s code and release something in the near term.

Upon pondering the issue of writing the entires to the file, why not just back up the whole html file and write a known good file to the remote system? Without looking into this in-depth at the moment, I can’t see any reason why not to do that (the files seem small enough), instead of writing a few lines here and there. Unless someone can give me a good reason?

By: Lewis

Lewis — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:38:12 +0000

Hi Josh, I am not aware of there being any facility to do this for a machine that isn’t currently logged on. Sorry.

By: Josh Goldberg

Josh Goldberg — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:13:24 +0000

Very useful. One more thing, do you know how to send a ctrl-alt-del so I can login to the users machine remotely even if he is not there?

By: Lukas Kucera

Lukas Kucera — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:16:31 +0000

Hello,
U may find useful this article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811079.aspx
Compleate description of how to make appliaction that work with Remote Help

By: Lukas Kucera

Lukas Kucera — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:14:43 +0000

Hello, greate article, but, i will be complaing about taking control of clients machine. Especialy in enterprise enviroment, i’ll be aware of it. I will highly recomand to left some user interaction, at least accepting the initial request. If you rip of this functionaly “security guys” can blame you about spying on customers/users. In other hand, there is realy no need to conform of overiding control of targeted machine, especialy when user can in any time cancel the connection by pressing ESC.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:14:33 +0000

Hi Doug, I’m afraid I didn’t finish it. Though a usable idea, it didn’t warrant the time spending on it to complete the script. Sorry.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:51:23 +0000

Did you complete this script? Please post it if you did.

Thanks,

Doug

By: Lewis

Lewis — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:42:56 +0000

I made a start (that means I’ve not finished) on the connection script.

So far it checks for the machine on the network, connects to it, backs up the existing files, edits the originals, opens offer remote assistance and bobs yer uncle… importantly it doesn’t change the changes back so don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Here you go:


Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8

Set oSh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oFs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

sComputerName = InputBox ("Type the computer name of the user you wish to offer assistance to...", "Offer Assistance")
sTargetPath = "\C$\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\System\Remote~1\"

If sComputerName = "" Then
  oSh.Popup "No name entered.", 2, "Warning", 0 + 4096
  WScript.Quit
End If

If Ping(sComputerName) = False Then
  oSh.Popup  UCase(sComputerName) & " is not responding to pings." & vbLf & "Ensure you have typed the name correctly.", 0, "Error", 0 + 48 + 4096
  WScript.Quit
Else
  ' Make backups of files being edited...
  oFs.CopyFile "\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "helpeeaccept.htm", _
         "\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "helpeeaccept.htm.bak", True
         
  oFs.CopyFile "\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "Interaction\Server\TakeControlMsgs.htm", _
         "\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "Interaction\Server\TakeControlMsgs.htm.bak", True
  
  Set oAccessFileBak = oFs.OpenTextFile _
            ("\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "helpeeaccept.htm.bak", ForReading)
  Set oAccessFile = oFs.OpenTextFile _
           ("\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "helpeeaccept.htm", ForWriting, True)
  
  Set oTakeControlFileBak = oFs.OpenTextFile _
              ("\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "Interaction\Server\TakeControlMsgs.htm.bak", ForReading)
  Set oTakeControlFile = oFs.OpenTextFile _
              ("\\" & sComputerName & sTargetPath & "Interaction\Server\TakeControlMsgs.htm", ForWriting)
  
  ' Edit the access file to auto accept assistance offers
  i = 0
  While Not oAccessFileBak.AtEndOfStream
    sLine = oAccessFileBak.ReadLine
    If i = 158 Then
      oAccessFile.WriteLine("DoAccept(); // This line was added by an automation script." & vbLf & sLine)
    Else
      oAccessFile.WriteLine(sLine)
    End If
    i = i + 1
  Wend
  
  ' Edit the take control file to auto accept take control requests.
  i = 0
  While Not oTakeControlFileBak.AtEndOfStream
    sLine = oTakeControlFileBak.ReadLine
    If i = 43 Then
      oTakeControlFile.WriteLine _
      (" ")
    Else
      oTakeControlFile.WriteLine(sLine)
    End If
    i = i + 1
  Wend

'   oSh.Run "hcp://CN=Microsoft%20Corporation,L=Redmond,S=Washington,C=US/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/unsolicited/unsolicitedrcui.htm", 3, False
'   WScript.Sleep 2000
'   
'   oSh.AppActivate "Help and Support Center"
'    
'   oSh.SendKeys sComputerName
'   WScript.Sleep 500
'   oSh.SendKeys "{TAB}{ENTER}"
  
  
End If

Function Ping(strTarget)

  Set objWMIPinger = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
  Set objWMIPingStatus = objWMIPinger.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_PingStatus where Address='" & strTarget & "'")
  
  For Each oPing In objWMIPingStatus
    If IsNull(oPing.StatusCode) Or oPing.StatusCode <> 0 Then
      Ping = False
    Else
      Ping = True
    End If
  Next
End Function