| Q. | Can you enable and disable Remote Assistance? |
| A. | If you are an IT administrator, you can use Group Policy to define how Remote Assistance is used within your organization. You can also determine whether users are able to request help outside your organization by controlling inbound and outbound traffic through port 3389 at the firewall. On individual machines, you can disable Remote Assistance requests for help from Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > System > Remote. |
| Q. | Why am I unable to connect to another user's computer by using the Offer Remote Assistance option? |
| A. | Offer Remote Assistance is disabled by default. If you want to allow experts to remotely control your computer you must enable Offer Remote Assistance using Group Policy. To do this, open the Group Policy editor on the computer to which you will be connecting and enable support for Offer Remote Assistance. The Group Policy setting can be found in Local Computer Policy\Administrative Templates\System\Remote Assistance. Select Offer Remote Assistance Setting and then select Enabled. The user who will be giving assistance must be a member of the Local Administrators Group on the receiving machine or added as a Helper in the Offer Remote Assistance Group Policy Setting. To add User and Groups to Group Policy: 1. | Go to Offer Remote Assistance Group Policy, and in the Helpers area, click Show. | 2. | Click Add and then enter the Domain\user account. |
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| Q. | Does Offer Remote Assistance work over the Internet? |
| A. | Yes. Remote Assistance will work if both the helper and requestor are in the same Windows domain. To successfully connect on the Internet, the IP address or FQDN will need to be used. The Internet does not support Netbios name resolution. |
| Q. | How does Remote Assistance handle time zone differences? |
| A. | The expiration time is set by the requestor when the invitation is created. This time will be adjusted to the local time of the helper's computer. The expiration time as displayed to the helper is only informational. The requestor can cause the invitation to expire at any time by clicking Expire in the View invitation status page in Help and Support Center. This causes the ticket on the requestor's computer to expire. Although the message displayed to the helper will show that the invitation is still open when a connection is attempted the requestor's computer will refuse the connection because the ticket has expired. |
| Q. | How does Remote Assistance handle localization issues? |
| A. | The helper will see the requestor's desktop and applications as they appear to the requestor. This means that there is no "translation" of the requestor's user interface on the helper's computer. |
| Q. | Does Remote Assistance detect IP address change if the requestor disconnects from the ISP and then Reconnects with a new IP Address? |
| A. | The ticket is based on the current IP address. The requestor's machine may receive a new IP address when the dialup connection (via an Internet Service Provider) gets disconnected during the remote session and then reconnected. If the helper connects with the invitation file that has the old IP address, the connection will fail. The requestor will need to resend the ticket to the helper or create a new ticket so that the new IP address is inserted into the invitation. You can resend the ticket though the Remote Assistance page in the Help and Support Center by clicking View Invitation Status and then clicking Resend. Note: The ticket may contain the fully qualified domain name and Remote Assistance uses this if IP address resolution fails, so the connection may still occur even if the IP address has changed. |
| Q. | Does Remote Assistance work through firewalls? |
| A. | Yes, Remote Assistance will work through any firewall when Port 3389 is opened. When using Windows Messenger, dynamic ports are used in the helper's ticket. The helper's computer uses the first available TCP port above 1024. When using the Windows Messenger method, the requestor makes the first attempt to establish a Remote Assistance session using the helper's IP address and port number in the ticket. Reference Q306298 Explanation of the Windows Messenger Reverse Connection Process and Q301529 Supported Connection Scenarios for Remote Assistance for more information. Remote Assistance can also push through Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) without enabling TCP Port numbers. |
| Q. | Does Remote Assistance connect through a Virtual Private Network (VPN)? |
| A. | Yes, as long as you have valid credentials to connection to the VPN, Remote Assistance will work fine. |
| Q. | Does Remote Assistance provide keyboard translation support? (Example: The helper has a U.S keyboard and the requestor uses an international keyboard.) |
| A. | Remote Assistance does not provide U.S. and international keyboard translations at this time. Remote Assistance also does not support keyboard remapping. To support translation of U.S. characters to international characters, set Regional and Language Options in Control Panel on the helper's computer. |
| Q. | Does Remote Assistance work behind NAT devices? |
| A. | The following is a complete story of Remote Assistance support for Network Address Translation (NAT) devices. | • | Yes, Remote Assistance will connect through NAT devices unless both the requestor and the helper are behind a Non-UPnP NAT device. | | • | Remote Assistance supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) to Traverse Network Address Translation devices. Windows XP Internet Connection Sharing supports UPnP. | | • | The following describes how Remote Assistance works with UPnP. Remote Assistance will detect the public Internet IP address and TCP port number on the UPnP NAT device and insert the address into the Remote Assistance ticket. The public Internet address and TCP port number will be used to connect through the NAT device by the helper or requestor workstation to establish a Remote Assistance session. The Remote Assistance connection request will then be forwarded to the client by the NAT device. | | • | Remote Assistance will not connect when the requester is behind a non-UPnP NAT device when e-mail is used to send the invitation file. When sending invitation using Windows Messenger, a non-UPnP NAT device will work if one client is behind a NAT device. If both the helper and requestor computers are behind non-UPnP NAT devices then the Remote Assistance connection will fail. | | • | There are several NAT networking companies that are looking into supporting UPnP by the end of this year. |
The following is a chart on Remote Assistance connections that work through NAT devices. Note: Windows 2000 ICS does not support UPnP. | KEY: |  = Not Supported  = Supported |
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| Both Novice and Expert |
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| Novice |
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| Expert |
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| Both Novice and Expert |
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