Remotely Start a PCAnywhere Host

[Infinitarchitect]

I've been playing around with this for a while trying to figure out a way to start a PCAnywhere host remotely, meaning without the user on the other end initiating their host connection, I would like to be able to start the services and/ or whatever files that are needed to run the remote control session. Anybody know how I could do this on version 10.5 and 11?

 

[jgeidl]

pcAnywhere will run as a servcie allowing it to start without any user intervention. The problem is that it doesn't set the service correctly to run automatically on its own.

Go to Administrative Tools | Services. Scroll down to the pcAnywhere Host Service item and double click on it to open it. Change the Startup Type to Automatic, Apply the change, hit OK, close the Services widow, reboot and see if it doesn't start on its own.

Jim

 

[Infinitarchitect]

Thanks for responding, I'm familiar with setting the PCanywhere service on automatic and I think that does work I haven't tested it, but was I was looking for was a way to initiate the PCanywhere remote connection without leaving anything on such as the services it uses or having PCanywhere start up at Windows Logon which is an option inside of PCanywhere. At least this is what is requested for me to try and figure out, if there is a way we can just turn it on when we choose to, if we need to and connect with any user intervention. Do you think there's a workaround to this?

 

[jgeidl]

I want to be sure I understand what you want to do. It *sounds* like:

You are at machine A and you want to turn on pcAnywhere on machine B remotely without having any remote access/control software installed and running on machine B?

Jim

 

[Infinitarchitect]

No, I apologize let me be clear, Machine A (remote) has pcAnywhere installed, Machine B (host) has pcAnywhere installed, normally the host needs to turn on the host connection making it available so that the remote control (Machine A) can control it remotely.

What I would like to do is have the same scenario except I don't want the host Machine B have to "turn on" the host connection just so I can connect. I want to be able to do that remotely and make the connection. Is there a way to do that? I understand the services need to be running and all that, I want to be able to turn all of that on remotely and control the machine without any user intervention.

 

[jgeidl]

You're going to have to have some kind of "client" running on the other machine, machine B, inorder to control it. If pcAnywhere, its self" is your issue take a look at Damware or VNC. If it is ANY remote software then you have a little bit of a problem.

If you want to get REALLY REALLY involved you could do some script programming that checks to see if a certain file exists (we'll call it pcanywhereon.txt) and, if so, start the pcanywhere service. The script would have to be polling for the file constantly for this to work. To cause the service to turn on you would copy pcanywhereon.txt to machine B, wait for the script to to see it and start pcAny.

Obviously, this is a lot of friggin work. I gotta ask; why don't you want the service running on machine B all the time?

Jim

 

[Infinitarchitect]

Yeah it seems like a lot more work than it's worth.

Well this is a request from my supervisor and possibly for security reasons they may not want the service to run all the time. Thanks for your help and tips I see I may have to rig something up. I might recommend Damware to him, thanks again. I've used VNC before I'm not sure why they don't like to use that it's free and its a smaller footprint than PCanywhere.

 

[jgeidl]

For what it's worth, I support clients all over the contry and have switched everyone to Dameware. It's faster and cleaner the pcAnywhere (and I user pcAny for years and years). The only thing I don't like as well is the file transfer funcationality.

As far as security, I think you can make most any of the remote control/access product pretty tight.

Good luck.

Jim

 

[Infinitarchitect]

Thanks Jim good looking out, I just went to the Dameware website it's looks like a very good alternative to PCanywhere! Thanks again, I thought noone would have answered to this thread lol.