Problem with VNC, Windows XP Home, and Startup

[Matthew Mahoney]

Hello,

Firstly, please allow me to compliment you on this spectacular service you are providing. This program is awesome, powerfull, and easy to use all in one. Not to mention free :) I am impressed and gratefull.

My problem is this: This past week, I learned about RealVNC and installed it to my computers. I have two computers on Win98 connected to eachother and then to my Cable Broadband connection through a Linksys router. RealVNC has worked flawlessly and awesomely on this setup. So two days ago when my parent that live 2 miles away got thier Cable connection installed, I had an idea.

My parents are in thier 80's, and about 6 months ago they got thier first computer. As you can imagine, they are still in the process of mastering E-Mail and how to bring up and browse a web page. So, I installed RealVNC to thier computer, and was able to succesfully remote-control thier comp from my house. I was ecstatic, and tried it out with them immediatly. They loved it, and its the easiest way Ive found to teach them. However, upon restarting thier comp, an unforseen problem occured.

When restarting Windows XP, thier Firewall and Anti-virus software work perfectly. However, the VNC server app icon wouldnt appear on the taskbar. I Ctrl+alt+deleted and saw that winvnc.exe was running. Since I am unfamiliar with XP, I thought perhaps this was just how XP worked. I went home, and I couldnt connect.

Well, today I spent over 2 hours over there after work, and this is where I stand:

Ive uninstalled/reinstalled VNC multiple times without luck.

I found a something called "Administrative Tools" in the control panel, and from there went to "Services" where I found the VNC server program. Services is apperantly Windows XP's list of files/apps to load at startup. I played around with login settings in there, only got worse, so put those back to where they were. Then, I tried disabling VNC Server, so it wouldnt load automatically. That works, and now its better than before because now, although it wont load automatically, before you couldnt even load it manually because an error popped up saying the app was already running.

However, I would much prefer if I could get winvnc to auto-run at startup succesfully. Because the less my parents have to do on thier end the better. So I tried putting winvnc into the Startup folder. And that didnt work because apperantly winvnc needs its .dll files in the same folders.

So I put those in the startup folders, that causes two errors to popup with start because apperantly windows tried to run them like apps. So, by making the files hidden, the application icon appears on the taskbar now, and double-clicking opens up the options just like it should. However, when the program is run from Startup, I still cant remote-control it. However, if I close winvnc, and then reopen manually from the exact same place, it works for some reason.

All theories, thoughts, ideas, or help of any kind would be greatly appreciated. Please direct replies to: [EMAIL PROTECTED], and thanks! :D

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