{"id":33,"date":"2010-01-16T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2010-01-16T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T12:15:00","slug":"super-windows-remote-support-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/16\/super-windows-remote-support-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Windows remote support tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When doing tech support I often find it is nearly impossible to figure out what people are trying to explain is &#8216;happening&#8217; with their system and what real problems they are actually having. <br \/>Trying to solve technical problems over the phone or via a back and forth chat or email is like trying to give a haircut over the phone. To properly diagnose and resolve an issue I have to be &#8216;there&#8217; sitting in front of and interacting with their system to actually solve the problem.<br \/>Here are some of the solutions I use. <\/p>\n<p>I am a huge fan of <a href=\"https:\/\/secure.logmein.com\/US\/home.aspx\">LogMeIn<\/a> for users that I frequently need to access their systems. <br \/>[Read family and close friends.] <br \/>I have a few paid pro accounts for my personal and business use and lots of free ones (under family and friends email\/login credentials) for continuing ongoing occasional support. I can&#8217;t say enough about the quality of the LogMeIn service. It is superb. It lets me access my PCs and Macs anywhere &#8211; even from my phone!<br \/>Becuase of the Mac support from the same interface&nbsp;I find this&nbsp;tool to be&nbsp;the best I&#8217;ve used.<br \/>It has proved worth the subscription cost hundreds of times over. <\/p>\n<p>For others that I won&#8217;t need always on or ongoing access I&nbsp;use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teamviewer.com\/index.aspx\">TeamViewer<\/a>. For &#8216;one off&#8217; logins it is simple fast and easy.<br \/>I simply have the end users download the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teamviewer.com\/download\/TeamViewerQS.exe\">TeamViewerQS<\/a> component and I can access their systems quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Another method is to have the user use one of the following tools and &#8216;show me&#8217; what they are talking about and what exactly they are <em>doing<\/em> by providing me with a &#8216;recorded session&#8217; of their actions and the problems.<\/p>\n<p>The newest and so far easiest to use is Windows 7&#8217;s built in tool. <br \/>Called &#8220;Problem Step Recorder&#8221;. Just type &#8220;psr&#8221; into the win 7 start menu, and you will find it. It too works very well. <br \/>PSR works like a camcorder to capture a user&#8217;s mouse movements and keystrokes into a file that can be played back later for problem analysis.&nbsp; This helps me to recreate or \u2018see\u2019 the problem situations. <br \/>Here is a great walk through of how to use it from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/using-problem-steps-recorder-psr-windows-7\/\">Winhelponline blog<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But what can people who run XP or Vista do?&nbsp; There&#8217;s no built-in feature to do the PSR work, but there is a free download available on TechNet that does the same thing. It\u2019s called \u201cScreenrecorder\u201d and is a very easy-to-use screen-to-video capture program, developed on top of Windows Media Encoder, that lets you easily capture what is going on to a small video file, which you can then send via e-mail to the appropriate person. <br \/>The TechNet description is <a href=\"http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/magazine\/2009.03.utilityspotlight2.aspx?pr=blog\">here<\/a>. <br \/>The actual download is <a href=\"http:\/\/download.microsoft.com\/download\/f\/d\/0\/fd05def7-68a1-4f71-8546-25c359cc0842\/UtilityOnlineMarch092009_03.exe\">here<\/a>.<br \/>And finally I just learned of a new application that may do the same thing as the PSR and Screenrecorder but is even simpler to use. It&#8217;s called \u201cShow Me Whats Wrong\u201d. <br \/>Sounds really cool and I am sure to try it soon. Have a look. <br \/>Video demonstration is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lNqO_uKui6s\">here<\/a>. <br \/>And the site is <a href=\"http:\/\/showmewhatswrong.com\/\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When doing tech support I often find it is nearly impossible to figure out what people are trying to explain is &#8216;happening&#8217; with their system and what real problems they are actually having. Trying to solve technical problems over the phone or via a back and forth chat or email is like trying to give &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/16\/super-windows-remote-support-tools\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Super Windows remote support tools&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18,7,60,13,8,1,16,11,15],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikemartinezonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}