offer remote assistance from non-domain computer

It's hard to believe no one else has run into this problem. I am the IT
manager at my company and there are many times when we are offsite where it
would be nice to offer remote assistance to our end-users. We have the offer
remote assistance working internally from domain (expert) computer to domain
(novice) computer. When offsite, on our personal computers, we VPN in to do
work.

The problem we are running into is that our personal computers are not part
of the domain and we are therefore not logged into the domain with a domain
username. When we try to use offer remote assistance from non-domain
(expert) to domain (novice) it fails because our personal computers/usernames
do not have correct privlages to perform a offer remote assistance.

I have a couple ideas of what to do to get around this problem. 1) to use
the offer remote assistance ticket generation code on msdn
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpchealth/html/remoteassistanceapi.asp>
and modifying the ticket that is generated with the correct expert username
and domain name (not even sure if this will work yet); 2) somehow use the
runas command to run the offer remote assistance tool as the network
administrator (this is also not working well because the runas doesn't
recognize the username/password when on VPN. Probably because the computer
isn't part of the domain and not logged in with domain username); or 3)
adding personal laptops to domain (very messy, probably screw up our IT
department's personal computers, still need to somehow be logged in on domain
and initiate domain login)

Any ideas on how to do this? I would rather just use microsoft's built in
remote assistance than to buy a 3rd party.

All computers (including personal) Windows XP Pro SP2, on a Windows Server
2003 environment. All windows firewalls disabled. VPN allows unrestricted
access from outside in. GPO setup to allow offer remote assistance and
solicited requests.

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:20:02 -0800, gilm0079 wrote:

> It's hard to believe no one else has run into this problem. I am the IT
> manager at my company and there are many times when we are offsite where it
> would be nice to offer remote assistance to our end-users. We have the offer
> remote assistance working internally from domain (expert) computer to domain
> (novice) computer. When offsite, on our personal computers, we VPN in to do
> work.
>
> The problem we are running into is that our personal computers are not part
> of the domain and we are therefore not logged into the domain with a domain
> username. When we try to use offer remote assistance from non-domain
> (expert) to domain (novice) it fails because our personal computers/usernames
> do not have correct privlages to perform a offer remote assistance.
>
> I have a couple ideas of what to do to get around this problem. 1) to use
> the offer remote assistance ticket generation code on msdn
> <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpchealth/html/remoteassistanceapi.asp>
> and modifying the ticket that is generated with the correct expert username
> and domain name (not even sure if this will work yet); 2) somehow use the
> runas command to run the offer remote assistance tool as the network
> administrator (this is also not working well because the runas doesn't
> recognize the username/password when on VPN. Probably because the computer
> isn't part of the domain and not logged in with domain username); or 3)
> adding personal laptops to domain (very messy, probably screw up our IT
> department's personal computers, still need to somehow be logged in on domain
> and initiate domain login)
>
> Any ideas on how to do this? I would rather just use microsoft's built in
> remote assistance than to buy a 3rd party.
>
> All computers (including personal) Windows XP Pro SP2, on a Windows Server
> 2003 environment. All windows firewalls disabled. VPN allows unrestricted
> access from outside in. GPO setup to allow offer remote assistance and
> solicited requests.

Suggest posting this question in the
microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely newsgroup

Links to open that group in a browser or a newsreader program can be found
on this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...ewsgroups.mspx

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows Shell/User