Take control of friend's desktop environment from a distance

[Crowcore]

Greetings,

A very non-techie friend of mine has a small software issue that I could fix in 5min (talking him through it would take hours, believe me). I remember 10 years ago a colleague of my mother "took over" our home PC from his office for the same reason. 

 

How can I do this ? Is there a feature in Windows or is an additional program required ? I was 13, I don't recall. My contact has Vista (32bits I think) and I Seven 64 bits Pro.

Thanks in advance!

[brownninja97]

Gotomypc, i think you have to pay for it, you could use team viewer as that is free even if its quite laggy.

[chaozbandit]

Teamviewer. Or you can do it through the built in Windows networking feature, but it's probably easier to do the former.

[Freaky_spider]

teamviewer would be the way, but there are some serious flaws, one the password thing that makes it if he powers it off you will have to relog so its not really good for long periods of control,

[Crowcore]

Teamviewer. Or you can do it through the built in Windows networking feature, but it's probably easier to do the former.

 

Thanks. Tell me more abt this built-in networking feature... Is it really hard to use for someone who doesn't know anything abt internet and networking protocols ?

[chaozbandit]

Thanks. Tell me more abt this built-in networking feature... Is it really hard to use for someone who doesn't know anything abt internet and networking protocols ?

Its not hard to set up per se because there are a lot of guides available online. Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection is pretty useful but imo teamviewer is more user friendly due to the fact that there are less steps required to set it up. My only experience with RDC is within my own home network, controlling various computers in different rooms and such. Nowadays, my go-to is Teamviewer for communication at any distance.

There are a bunch of things you have to enable first should you decide you want to use RDC. Microsoft has a walkthrough in their FAQ.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/connect-using-remote-desktop-connection#connect-using-remote-desktop-connection=windows-vista