I thought I'll share with you a recent amusing and interesting remote support experience. It involved helping Juan, a friend of mine in UK and his mother in Mexico, both of us ultimately having to control her PC, miles and oceans away. It is interesting how now-a-days members of a family live and work apart in different ends of the world and have to depend on the internet to be a family. You never know when you might get into a situation to remotely assist one of your closest ones with PC software hiccups.

Anyways, I was text chatting to Juan, currently working in UK and was wondering why he was not getting back with his usually witty rapid responses. On my demand for attention, he then told me that his mother in Mexico was driving him nuts complaining...

 My friend put the talking thing and left. Now, the talking thing is going round and round.

He asked me if I could make anything out of it and I said all I can think of and see is a huge question mark in a cloud on top of my head.

After further discussions about what is "talking thing going round and round" going nowhere, I suggested him to make a remote connection to his mother's PC in Mexico using Zoho Assist and SEE what she was seeing. He said his mother's computer ideology is such that the monitor is the internet-email and the other box (CPU) is unnecessary. I assured him that if she knows to check her email that will do to gain remote control of her PC. Skeptical but hopeful, he went and started a remote session from the Zoho web page; typed his mother's email-id and clicked "Start session".

Glad to receive any email from her son, his mom opened the email, "clicked on one of those blue things with the hand" (email link) and later on Juan's request clicked on "Join session" from the web page that opened. In minutes Juan was not only viewing but controlling the mouse and working on his mother's PC located far away in Mexico. Then he typed "Hahaha....I see now what the talking thing round and round is!" I demanded immediate explanation and he insisted it be a suspense.

After a while though, he said he was not able stop the "talking thing" from going "round and round" and some extra help would be good. Ultimately he invited me to also view his mother's PC by using the "invite" option in Zoho remote support interface. So, three people in different corners of the world were sharing the desktop of a PC in minutes. No internet settings, firewall tweaking, IP address or such. All from our web browsers.

And so, I too figured out what was going "round and round" repeatedly, while it should be going in. It is absolutely amazing how something simple can seem complicated. In collaboration, we browsed through some message boards online on his mother's computer and after following instructions on one related forum, we got the talking thing to go in. Juan also explained his mother how to talk through it. If you are intrigued to know what was going "round and round".....click here to see.                                                                      

Remote support is simple and effective with Zoho Assist. You can connect to anyone, anywhere even through firewalls/proxies, NAT. You can have an IT technician remotely control your PC right from his office. If you are in IT support, you even have features like Remote PC Diagnostics and built-in file transfer to exchange and install updates and patches. You can collaborate with your colleagues, share your desktops and work as a team. Try Zoho Assist next time you are in need to remotely control a PC.

Did you know that using Remote Support with Zoho Meeting, you can now get comprehensive diagnostic information about a remote PC in just a click? Yes, a click on the 'Diagnostics’ button control instantly unveils ‘Remote PC Diagnostics’ to you.

It is a known fact that PC diagnosis is essential to hasten the process of identifying the root cause of a problem, especially while working on rectifying technically challenging software issues (that may be affecting the functioning of other hardware). If you are a computer support technician, then being able to obtain information about applications, processes, active drivers, events etc becomes necessary to troubleshoot issues that demand higher level of research.

Typically, while performing remote support on customer PCs, the Task Manager and management programs in Administrative Tools are frequently used for diagnostic purposes. It may be quite tedious and frustrating if the controller of a remote system has to navigate and activate them remotely at the client’s end, time and again, having to access each utility individually at various points of the support session.

Remote Support with Zoho Meeting helps prevent this time draining situation by aggregating the prime diagnostic information under one simple tabbed ‘Remote PC Diagnostics’ interface.

Using Remote PC Diagnostics

The support technician or the controller of the remote system can launch the Remote PC Diagnostics view, by clicking on the ‘Diagnostics’ button control on the User Interface (UI).

The Remote PC Diagnostics interface contains seven parts: Dashboard, Processes, Services, Drivers, Applications, Start-up and Event Viewer. Each tab displays information relative to the actions and activities on the remote system.

The Processes tab lists all the on-going processes on the remote system along with the process-id (PID), memory used, the respective percentage memory, user name and priority. The list can be sorted in ascending or descending order relative to name alphabets or numerical values by clicking on the title name of each column. This is mainly useful to trace the processes consuming the most and least memory.

Services

The Services tab lists all the long-running executables that perform specific functions and do not require user intervention on the remote system.  A brief description of the service functions is displayed along with the path to the service executable, its current status and startup type. A technician can track how a service was started and also determine if any unwanted services were started automatically.

Drivers

The Drivers tab lists all the hardware and software drivers that are active in the remote system, in three columns: Name, Display Name and Type. While the Name column corresponds to the name of the driver file, Display Name denotes the kind of software or hardware being driven. The Type column specifies if the driver is part of the kernel or the file system. This helps a remote controller to assist a client dealing with driver related issues.

Applications

The Applications tab shows details of software applications and programs running on the remote system. It contains Name, Version number, Publisher and Location (path to the directory) where the application is executed from. This enables the controller of the remote system to check for the presence of any spurious applications that may be hindering proper functioning of the system.

Start-Up

The Start-Up tab displays details of all the programs that get initiated when the remote client starts his/her system. Most malware programs make their way into the start-up path in the registry and keep running in the background without the knowledge of the user. This being the case, a support technician can track down such unwanted programs from this tabbed view and also get to know if too many start-up programs are slowing the system down.

Event Viewer

The Event Viewer tab provides a snapshot of significant occurrences on the remote computer that fall into one of the three severity levels, information, warning or error. With the Event Viewer, information about hardware, software, and system components on the remote computer can be obtained, along with monitoring of security related events. This helps the support technician to identify and diagnose the source of system problems, or predict potential ones.

Note: This facility is available currently only for remote PCs running Windows. Work is in progress to support Mac and Linux.

Rapid Remote Support

The success of resolving a computer problem through remote assistance relies heavily on the scope and speed of access to in-depth system information at the remote customer’s end. Your client may not find it too comforting to watch you open up his/her task manager, event manager, administrative tools and such cryptic, unfamiliar stuff you deal with rather frequently. As an analogy think about a patient forced to watch a surgeon perform his fine cuts, stitches and chat about the insides with his peers.....not good right?

Using Remote Support with Zoho Meeting, you can now simply click on the ‘Diagnostics’ button and immediately have access to all the prime information, otherwise only available through individual access and activation at the remote PC end. You can get on with performing your technical surgery on the remote PC given the better hold on the specifics of the problem, sans any paranoid customers.

Try Remote Support with Zoho Meeting today, assist your clients effectively and have them impressed with your rapid service.

Hari