Any easy ways to play an audio file on a remote PC

Question

I have a requirement to remotely trigger the playing of an audio file on a remote PC. The PC in question may not be on the same domain as the triggering system. It may be running either XP or Vista. The audio file can be on the remote machine.

I have all of the local logon details for each remote PC.

I could write a client/server service application that could handle the automatic connection, negotiation and playback, but I was wondering whether there are any options that are supported by each OS that I could trigger remotely.

For example I can do this all easily using MIcrosofts Remote Desktop Connection manually, but is there a library that I could call?

Answer 1

Take a look at the Sysinternal tool suite. Especially the psexec tool does what you want. It allows you to run any command on a windows remote machine, even executables, that only exists on your machine.

Introduction

Utilities like Telnet and remote control programs like Symantec's PC Anywhere let you execute programs on remote systems, but they can be a pain to set up and require that you install client software on the remote systems that you wish to access. PsExec is a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems, complete with full interactivity for console applications, without having to manually install client software. PsExec's most powerful uses include launching interactive command-prompts on remote systems and remote-enabling tools like IpConfig that otherwise do not have the ability to show information about remote systems.

For some deeper insight of how this works, take a look at this or this article.

Answer 2

Install messenger such as Skype on all remote machines and call it :)

It is better to design a server that fires an event and client that should listen to it.

Answer 3

Note that psexec does not work on remote XP home machines.