Windows 8 & VNC help :)

[steelhammers786]

Good Morning Lovely People @ Edugeek. I hope your all well. I wonder if someone can help me. I work in a school as IT Technician, the network is a bit flaky at the moment, and just trying to figure stuff out @ the moment. I wonder if someone can answer my query, we are spread over several sites, and I need to install a particular software on a staff desktop (windows 7) and I am using windows 8 OS, I can ping the server, but I cant ping the staff desktop? also I remember at my last place, I could install VNC silently on any machine on the network, and then use the admin password to connect remotely, because the IT Manager set it up at the last place so I don't really know how he set it up and I need to set it up for this place as we're spread over several sites, and its a mission going from one site to another just for simple installation. Any help on these issues are greatly appreciated. A thanks in advanced.

[sted]

at a guess the pcs firewall is blocking you

[steelhammers786]

Cheers. I'll try that

[DJ-1701]

You can't ping the desktops? Are they on the same network as yourself? Can you ping them when you are connected to the server at all?

 

Generally you should be able ping the machines, or at least get their names resolved to an IP address if pinging has been blocked on the workstation. I think there in lays half the battle.

[mukz]

Maybe some ACLs on the switch gear? If turning the firewall off doesn't work

[ITGURU]

I have a firewall policy on our client PCs that allows the VNC port and PING exception, but ONLY allow our tech PCs to use VNC, so even if a user had a portable app it would fail to connect.

 

For most remote installs I use Remote desktop, but for VNC I have used VNCed MSI Creator - you can build an MSI with the VNC password embedded, then just link it to your computer OUs - at boot up it will install silently and start the service. Works just as well on Windows 10 also without needing to update vnc version.

[steelhammers786]

Thank you all. I'll try these suggestions and let you know. much appreciated for your time

[cooka]

Is the machine you are trying to connect to actually connected to the network? If so, you should be able to get an ip from it...

 

You could push out VNC to each remote computer, then just connect to it when you need it. Its only a service that runs so wouldn't bloat your machines out too much