[Echovnc-users] Problems with EchoVNC and TightVNC with Echoware

[Ken Molnar]

Hello,

I am having a couple of issues getting an echoware-enabled VNC application to work exactly as I need.  It seems that each variant I have tried using has an issue that prevents it from entirely suiting my needs.  I need to be able to access a machine whether it is logged in or not and then be able to log back out of it after I am done doing what I needed to do.  I guess I have no choice but to run whatever program I use as a service.

Problem 1:
I decided to try running TightVNC with the echoware version overlayed.  It works great except for one weird issue.  It connects to the echoserver just fine, even through logins and logouts...until you reboot the machine.  Once the machine is rebooted, it does not connect back up to the echoserver until you log back into the machine locally.  The problem must lie within the echoware portion of the TightVNC distribution  because I can still access the machine directly via port forwarding in the same situation.  I tried the beta version of the echoware-tightVNC and that did not resolve the issue.  I have tried it on more than one machine so that does not appear to be the issue either.  I have also mixed and matched various base versions of TightVNC and that didn't seem to help either (though it seems each version of TightVNC has its own weird little bugs, varying from failure to replace the wallpaper after disconnect to the inability to properly associate the locations of desktop and my documents during file transfers).  After many attempts at getting this solution to work, I decided to try something else.  This brings me to problem 2.

Problem 2:
I read something in the archived mailing list here that suggested running echoVNC as a service using Microsoft's srvany utility.  This seemed like a great solution because I prefer UltraVNC over TightVNC anyways, and this method would let me choose.  I got everything up and running and it was free of ALL the bugs I was experiencing in the TightVNC variation.  I ran into a new bug, however.  This one is a little weird, though I am pretty sure it has something to do with running the application as a service when it wasn't designed to do so.  I can log into a logged off machine the first time, no problem.  After I am done, I log the machine out and disconnect.  Now, I log back into the logged-off machine again.  No problems here.  Now I try to log off the machine before I disconnect again.  It won't let me.  You can't restart, shut down, log off, nothin.  The only way to get it to log off or restart is to hit ctrl alt delete and terminate echovnc.exe.  Once you terminate it, you can log off or reboot as normal.  Only problem with this is that now if you log off, you will not be able to connect again because the service isn't running.

Does anyone have any idea how to a.) fix the problem with one of the two solution methods or b.)know another method that I can try?  I would really appreciate any help anyone has to offer.  This echoserver based VNC thing is absolutely awesome.  It is wonderful not having to configure ports and not having to worry about dynamic IPs.  Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long read.  If you need any more information please ask.

Thanks again,
Ken Molnar