Remote assistance

[jj]

Here is my problem, that I know some helpful sole on here will have the answer for.

I have a winxp pro machine connected to machine running win98se.

I have th win98se coonected permantley to my broadband connection.

As I dont need to use the win98se machine, it is just the box, no keybaord , mouse or monitor attached.

Fow whatever reason every now and then, i loose my connection and have to f around plugging a monitor, keybaord and mouse into it to sort it out.

I dont want the expense of buting a switcher box for this purpose.

So the crux of my question, does anyone know of any free/trial software so that I can take over the win98 box from my xp machine, so i can see the screen move the mouse etc.


cheers for your help

[odin]

Yup...check VNC. But why in the name of all holy deities would you want to use a cruddy Win98 box as router/server??!

Wouldn't you be better of using a prebuilt/out of the box linux or bsd router solution? More stable, helluva lot more secure...

BTW. VNC isn't secure by itself, but you can make it secure by using an SSH remote shell server on your routerbox. That would also make secure/encrypted connections to your WinXP box possible (even though it's behind a router, SSH does TCP/IP tunneling).

[Ilwrath]

I use VNC.

Real VNC Website

It's a free (as in speech) software, and there are both clients and servers available on many platforms.  I've actually controlled windows servers from my Amiga using this.

Really, though, you should probably consider updating the Win98 machine to 2k (or NT4 if it's really old).  Both have similiar base system requirements to 98se, and are MUCH more stable for things that aren't games.  That way, you'll have to mess around with it much less.  Last time I rebooted my Win2k server was after a power failure.

[jj]

I had an old compaq deskpro pentium 2 hanging around, thought i would save money and use that, got zonealarm running on my xp machine then.

[Ilwrath]

Hmm... odin beat me to it.  ;-)  

I would also agree with him in saying that Linux or BSD would even be a better choice than 98 for that router box if you want to do a little reading into how to set it up.  

And you can use VNC on any of it.  :-)

[jj]

i tried this, but retail versions of windows are funny about compaq machines for some reason.

I can install win98 and before, but not xp, 2000, 2003 server or windows 2000 server on it, it comes up with error codes at the beggining of install

[odin]

Hm...weird. I just acquired a cruddy old PentiumPro 200 Compaq box with NT4 installed. I installed Win95 temporarily due to the fact that I didn't have a Win2k CD handy (I'm interested to see how slow W2k would be on that box :-)). W95 installed nicely tho on it.

It appeared to me that the BIOS settings program is loaded of a small dedicated partition on the HD. Pretty weird.

Anyhoo....lose W98 as a router OS :-).

[sir_inferno]

why the flip would you use zonealarm on your xp machine if xp has it's own built in dynamic firewall (unless it's like zonealarm premium or somthing)  :-?

[jj]

becuase the firewall in windows xp aint as good as zonelaram

[Glaucus]

JJ wrote:
I can install win98 and before, but not xp, 2000, 2003 server or windows 2000 server on it, it comes up with error codes at the beggining of install

Could be BIOS settings. Set everything to fail-safe settings and not optimum or high-perf pre-sets. just a thought, but XP is more picky about the hardware that it runs on. If things are overclocked and timings off, you may be able to get away with it on Win98 but not with WinXP.

  - Mike

[Ilwrath]

It appeared to me that the BIOS settings program is loaded of a small dedicated partition on the HD. Pretty weird.

Yes, they do.  You can download a program from Compaq (called, cutely enough, a ROMPAQ) to re-install this partition.

Not that I've learned this from experience.  (Whistles innocently)

As for performance, it should be fine.  I actually have a P1- 133mhz w/ 64mb RAM that I use as test Win2k server.  Amazingly, for a single user, it is able to click along ok.  No speed demon, but it works for very light tests.

[odin]

@ilwrath:
:-D So I shouldn't fdisk that HD then :-). Do Compaq's usually have flashable ROMs btw?

[jj]

I found this to be the case with an old compaq 484 laptop  I used to have till somebody stole it( there was a partion on the HD to run the bios setup prog.  It was all like gui driven, was pretty cool.


I formated the drive and lost this, had to use a prog as said on this thread to put it back

however the despro I have got, has no such partion, and there is nothing in the bios that should be upsetting win2kpro, I have looked throughly.

I find it strange, cause when I had the machine it had nt4 workstation on it, so i tohught great, ill wipe this and just stick win2k on it, no dice.

Btw thanks for the vnc info, works a treat

[Ilwrath]

:-D So I shouldn't fdisk that HD then

You should be able to fdisk or whatever.  Just dont de-allocate that small partition, though, unless you have the disk(s) to re-install it.

Do Compaq's usually have flashable ROMs btw?

Most seem to, in some form, or another.  Some appear to just load the updates to the HD partition, and don't really flash anything, but there's usually some way to update.

[Ilwrath]

however the despro I have got, has no such partion, and there is nothing in the bios that should be upsetting win2kpro, I have looked throughly.

I find it strange, cause when I had the machine it had nt4 workstation on it, so i tohught great, ill wipe this and just stick win2k on it, no dice.

There was a certain type of early power-management that would upset Win2k badly enough that it wouldn't install cleanly.  Forget which it was.  I remember I had to apply a BIOS update to my old P1 and then disable all power management features.  (I don't remember if the BIOS update was for the power-management or to enable larger HDs, though!)

Also, a faulty CD ROM drive will cause Win2k to install corrupt.  (Seems it doesn't actually check the integrity of the files as it is copying them to the HD)  I spent a couple hours chasing that problem, once, as well.  ;-)