What program can I use to remotely help clients?

Question

I have a lot of people that ask me to fix their computers. Usually it is "slow computer" or "my computer has pop-ups," etc. In other words they have viruses and spyware. I thought I could use a remote program to do it, instead of them brining their computer to me or me traveling to their house..

I thought of UltraVNC, though I'm not sure how I would get them to use it. What I would like to have is a program they can download from my website.

What program would you recommend for this? Remote Desktop? VNC? Something else? I'm happy to pay a small fee if necessary to make things as seamless as possible. Word of mouth is valuable and a good referral for an easy to work with computer person (me) is worth that monthly or one time fee.

I have Vista, most will have Vista Home Premium or XP Home. I have Vista Home Premium and Mac OS X. I can use Linux if necessary. I just don't have it installed right now.

Thanks.

EDIT: Is there an alternative to copilot? I like it but I'm afraid to stake everything on one provider.

Answer 1

LogMeIn has a free version that works very well. It runs in the user's system tray and you can login and control their computer as long as they have the program running. The free version has a few less features, but they're mostly luxuries instead of necessities.

Answer 2

https://www.copilot.com/

It's made to be simple so even the most novice computer users can figure it out.

Copilot helps you fix someone's computer problems by letting you connect to their computer, see what they see, and control their mouse and keyboard to help fix the issue.

It's nice because they just go to the site and enter the code you give them. The installation is simple from there.

(Modified)

Answer 3

Team Viewer is a desktop sharing remote control support tool. It is free for non-commercial, personal use.

Answer 4

There are a few different options:

• Remote Desktop: Nice interface, integrates with Windows very well (I had no trouble connecting to my Vista desktop from my XP laptop). I think your client would need to have Windows XP pro; XP home does not have the Remote Desktop Server.
• RealVNC: Nice interface, the free version is very useful. Encrypted connections are available with the non-free version.
• There are others (like Copilot), but I have only used Remote Desktop and RealVNC.

With either of these, you need to make sure port-forwarding is setup if they have a router, and that the firewall whitelists the program.

Answer 5

Windows XP has built-in "Windows Assist" which lets you send an invite to another Windows machine (typically via e-mail) and allows you to remotely control the machine with them watching. This is a nice option because it is already built into Windows (albeit not as well known as RemoteDesktop or LogMeIn).

The advantage over Remote Desktop is that the user can see what you are doing to their machine and control can be passed back and forth.

This link has the steps to do this.