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What is VNC?
Are there other versions available?
Where can I find more out about it?
What is Tridia?
What is TightVNC?
What is zVnc?
Can I hide the Tray Icon?
What is UltraVNC?
What is mVNC?
What is fastpush?
What do I need to run fastpush?
How do I use it?
Can I modify the script?
Does fastpush work on international installs of Windows?
How can I push VNC to a list of machines?
Windows 9x and ME
Windows NT & 2000
Windows XP
Why is this site so Windows orientated?
VNC is an open source remote control program written by AT&T's Lab in Cambridge. I might have the banners up to their sites, but I didn't write it.
VNC comprises of two main components: the viewer and the server. The server takes incoming connections over TCP/IP and sends back a user desktop to the viewer. The viewer is a smallish file, although many versions of VNC support the use of a browser instead.
Are there other versions available?
There's two answers to this question. Firstly, there is support for numerous platforms (*unix, Apple Mac, Windows, Amiga, etc.) and secondly there are different flavours of VNC. Some flavours provide better compression, different encryption mechanisms or are designed for modem use rather than LAN/WAN.
However, the basic VNC compression is hextile and this is support cross platform and cross version, so you should be able to view your Linux desktop from Windows and vice versa.
Where can I find more out about VNC?
The best places to look for information are the RealVNC website, VNC FAQ and the mailing list.
The mailing list is fairly busy and lots of questions have been answered by it. It's often worth checking the archives before you post. You can browse the archives or search them.
This is a variant of VNC which includes a number of modifications from numerous sources. This product is still available on the web, but the Tridia group have ceased development.
Although Tridia includes this form of compression, this was the source. TightVNC was written by Const Kaplinsky to provide better performance over dial-up connections. His improvements include optional JPEG compression (so you can make the display quicker, but more lossy) amongst other things. There's versions for both UNIX and Windows.
VNC's security is satisfactory for LAN use, but over public networks it's better to safe rather than sorry. zVnc is a development by Dave Dyer and it includes zebedee compress/encryption. Those of you with a UNIX/Internet background will probably have heard of this, but for the newbies amongst us (including me! <w>) it's a more secure way of connecting to another zVnc server. Dave's zVNC page can be found in the links section.
Some people like to keep the VNC icon hidden away. Now, this might be for security issues (nothing for the user to play with) or for a more shady reason (spying perhaps) - I won't be going into a debate about the rights and wrongs here - it's really up to you if you do it or not.
Vanilla VNC - the AT&T release - doesn't allow you to hide the icon. You tell Windows not to load the service helper (that's the tray icon), but VNC will not always work properly if you do that. The service helper is there to query the current user's settings.
However, Tridia does and I *think* TightVNC does too, but I suggest you check Konst's web site about that.
From Tridia's main site - this is what they say about hiding the icon:
Added registry flag to cleanly disable the tray icon on all platforms and in all modes without affecting other settings. The default is "0" and indicates that the tray icon should not be disabled. A value of "1" will suppress the tray icon for all users. HKLM\SOFTWARE\ORL\WinVNC3\DisableTrayIcon DWORD "0" HKLM\SOFTWARE\ORL\WinVNC3\DisableTrayIcon DWORD "1"
There is a version of VNC that hides the icon by default. Check out the downloads folder for more information.
UltraVNC is a hybrid of Sam Folliard's EsVNC and Rudi Vos's VDCC projects and is very Windows orientated. Ultra has NTLM / AD logon support, chat windows and file transfer.
mVNC is RealVNC 337 but has had it's code tweaked for performance and stability. It will probably merge with the main source tree.
Fastpush is a script that can remotely install WinVNC on to a computer running NT, 2000 or XP. You need admin rights to do this, but it will work over any reasonable network connection.
It's a script I wrote out of the need to get VNC on as many PCs as possible.
I started off using it at home, before our the CAD operators at work became
willing victims guinea pigs. Their office was in another building and
remote support was very useful! It wasn't long before we wanted VNC installed
at area offices.......
Originally, the script only provided basic net use and copy commands, it wasn't until later - and the fact that I got fed up repeating myself on each PC, that the script's automated abilities were designed. Seeing as VNC was free and the script is nothing more than a clever batch file, it seemed the right thing to do to make it available to everyone else. :-)
What do I need to run fastpush?
Subject to you having the right Windows OS (NT, 2000 and XP not 95, 98 or ME), you'll need to download a copy of it and extract this to a folder - I would suggest something in a root drive, perhaps c:\fastpush. Then read the howto.
Check the howto section as that shows you the ins & outs. Please don't just dive in by trying to run it, there are some things you'll need to change first. (Read the fine manual! <w>).
If you do come up with something clever, please do pass it along and I'll take a look and quite probably upload your idea to this site. Those people that have sent in ideas & code (as much as NT shell gets like code) are - and I hasten to add in no particular order: Ryan Casey, Stephen Mills, Morten Lunde and Mark Rink.
As for modifying the script, I've no problem with you modding it, but please keep my name in the titles and don't flog it on as your own work. Thanks. :-)
Does fastpush work on international installs of Windows?
In theory yes it should, as out of people mentioned above one is German and Norway. I've altered key parts of the script so it's less English-centric (is that a term?) but I can't trap all non-English output.
The point where the script is most likely to fail at, will be the ping statement and the location of "program files". I understand that "program files" changes quite radically when you don't use an English install of Windows.
One key problem for me testing the script's compatibility is that a) I only speak English and b) I don't have a non-English install of NT/2000/XP. :-)
For Spanish users, Wilter Borba and Diego Rodriguez both tell me that you need to trap a different result for the IPSTATUS part of Fastpush. Search that section out under Notepad and change the if %ipc% statements to this:
if "%ipc%"=="Conectado" goto sharecheck if "%ipc%"=="Desconectado" goto sharecheck
If anyone else has anything about their ups and downs with Fastpush, let me know and I'll post your findings here.
How
can I push VNC to a list of machines?
Louis Joyce wrote in and offered the following command line:
for /f "tokens=1" %i in (workstations.txt) do call vnc %i /reg /config d:\fplocation\pass.ini
workstations.txt should contain a list of the computer names, DNS entries or IP numbers.
You can use the NT resource kit tool GLOBAL to get a list of computers by reading the members of domain computers. Failing that, you need to write a quick vbscript. :-)
Because the script uses special net use commands, you can't run it from Windows 95, 98 or ME. It only works on NT, 2000 and XP. Sorry guys!
However, I have written a howto for making your own setup.exe file. You can use this in a logon script to install VNC to your target 9x workstations. There's only one okay box the user has to click, so apart from that it's pretty seamless.
I use NT workstation at work and Windows 2000 Pro at home - I've not had any problems fastpushing VNC on to machines with the script.
Fastpush works on XP provided you have the firewall turned off (or at least remote file and registry access enabled) and have the ForceGuest security setting disabled.
ForceGuest is disabled automatically in a domain environment, but for workgroup computers, you'll need to use GPEDIT.MSC to disable it. Open GPEDIT.MSC then browse through Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options and select Network Access: Sharing and Security Model for Local Accounts. Change this to Classic. Thanks to Rick Doerr for writing in with the step by step guide.
Why is this site so Windows orientated?
Good question! Well, the bulk of my IT career has been working with Windows and it's pretty much the defacto desktop at the mo (things may change and I'm open minded about these things). I'm not saying which OS is the best - we all have our own opinions.
I don't have any experience of Apple Macs and the reason for that is that I've never worked with any. My linux skills are slowly improving, but there isn't a need for fastpush in the linux world due to it's excellent remote admin features (webmin, SSH, sftp, etc.).
Hopefully as my experience broadens, you'll see more interoperability articles although I've no doubt they'll have some Windows slant.