I am terribly confused, and I hope someone can help me. I am running 4 computers on a home network using winVNC. Three of the computers are run strictly as servers, meaning they never use winVNC to connect to other computers, though they are used locally for other things. The fourth computer is used to manage the other three using winVNC viewer. A complete description of the network and versions is included below.
Here's the rub: the 4th computer is an eye-controlled machine that I use as a communications device, as I am afflicted with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease or motor neuron disease (MND) outside the US), and am now paralyzed from the neck down. The only way I have to manage the other machines is with a VNC-like product. Unfortunately, winVNC is proving to be problematical. Sometimes after choosing a machine to connect to, the viewer just "goes away", and I never get asked for a password, and no session will be established. Other times I will be prompted for the password, and THEN it goes away. Sometimes I get a failure to find server error even though I know the machine is up, and VNC server is running. I could deal with the flakiness of the connections, except that some of these errors cause my text-to-speech mechanism to fail, and I must reboot the machine to get it working again. Of course, without the text-to-speech mechanism, I have no way to summon help, so this situation cannot continue. As you can see by the network/version descriptions below, I've been hiding under a rock for several years wrt VNC. Now there's realVNC, tightVNC, and UltraVNC. Can anyone tell me what the difference is? Which one would be best for my situation? Perhaps even a non-VNC solution like Radmin? Free is a plus, but certainly not a requirement. Also, I am the only one with computer knowledge, so I need to have a way that I can install/configure the new real/tight/ultraVNC server on the remote machines. Any ideas on how to do it? Can 2 versions of VNC run at the same time (using different ports)? If so, I suppose I could login to the remote computer using the current winVNC, do the install of r/t/uVNC, restart the remote, reconnect with the new version, then uninstall the old version. Does that sound feasible? Sorry to be so long-winded, but I wanted to make sure all the details were covered. Thank you for any help you can provide. Andy Etherington Details: Viewer tablet pc, 1.4 GHz centrino, windows xp professional, wireless network connection, VNC viewer 3.3.7.0 Server 1 tower pc, 500 MHz Piii, windows 98se, 10/100 into router, winVNC server 3.3.3R9 Server 2 tower pc, 500 MHz Piii, windows 98se, wireless, winVNC server 3.3.3R7 Server 3 tower pc, 2.4 GHz P4, windows xp home, wireless, winVNC server 3.3.3R7 _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list [email protected] To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
