
Remote-Anything
Frequently Asked Questions
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A more recent version of this document and the RA Manual are available
(both in HTML) at: http://www.twd-industries.com


1. GENERAL INFORMATION
2. NT SPECIFIC
3. HINTS & TROUBLESHOOTING
4. LICENSES


GENERAL INFORMATION
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- Which are the Supported Platforms?
- The Microsoft Windows 32-Bit platforms: Windows 95, 98, NT 3.5, NT 4.0 
(for Intel, Cyrix, AMD and Digital Alpha Windows NT systems). PowerPC and 
MIPS processors versions are available on request. The Remote-Anything 
technology is portable and is not tied to Microsoft's OS, so if you really 
need it for another platform, contact us.

- How difficult is it to install the RA Demo?
- 1) COPY Slave.exe on one PC and Master.exe on ANOTHER PC.
  2) REBOOT the Slave PC.
  3) Run Slave first and then run Master. That's it!

- Does Remote-Anything need a powerful PC?
- RA works almost in real-time with a Cyrix 6x86MX 200Mhz and at acceptable 
speed on an Intel Pentium 90Mhz.
If you have a more recent machine, you have real-time (Note that the graphic 
adapter is a key element of the speed delivery, so if you need real speed, 
consider having a good graphic adapter).

- How much disk-space and memory Remote-Anything needs?
- Masters need about 400 KB and Slaves need about 80 KB on disk. This is why 
we talk about real 'thin-clients and servers'. They need only 4 MB of RAM to 
work. One other obvious gain of KB programs vs MB programs is SPEED: when 
you ask a computer to execute 1 instruction instead of 100 to reach the same 
target... things are just going faster. Remote-Anything does not need tens 
of MB like other remote control products because we are really commited on 
the optimization of remote control processes. Deployment, as a direct 
consequence, is also cheaper and faster: as an e-mail attachment, the 
one-click install program downloads in seconds, not hours.

- What protocols and connections are supported?
- Remote-Anything supports TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet 
Protocol). This is the protocol used by the Internet. TCP/IP allows to work 
over LANs, WANs, SLIP, RAS. Even Novell Netware went to TCP/IP in its 
version 5.0, giving up with IPX. TCP/IP is here to stay. The connections can 
be made from a LAN, WAN, or via the Internet, you can use a dial-up 
connection and a dynamic IP address.

- How can I DIAL directly into a distant PC to control it with RA?
- NT4 and Windows 98 come with the dialup networking server (Windows 95 
includes it in the Plus! pack). Just install it (Control Panel, Add/Remove 
Programs) and make sure that the Slave PC has an IP address (see below, the 
'How to configure my PCs to use TCP/IP?' question). That's all!

- Can I use Remote-Anything with DOS applications?
- Yes. In a windowed DOS Session. 

- Is it possible to edit or delete files and directories, modify the 
Registry, change the desktop settings?
- Yes. You can do almost ANYTHING you could do from the distant keyboard, 
ranging from typing a letter and printing it to changing the configuration 
or even running immediately a ScreenSaver! This is why we called it 
Remote-Anything. Why 'almost'? Well, due to pure physical limitations we did 
not found the way to do everything ranging from [converting 
Hebrew/Arabic/Chinese keyboard hits to US keys] to [transfering full-screen 
MPEG video in real-time].

- May I use Remote-Anything Master to monitor end-users service quality?
- Yes, there is no way for a user to know that you are connected. If you 
don't type keys or move the mouse in the Master window, users will not 
notice that something is happening there. In fact, there is no way for the 
user to know that the Slave is running: it is invisible in the CTRL+ALT+DEL 
Task-List, and thus cannot be stoped. As it is run by Windows at startup it 
cannot be erased, even by error because the file is in use.
Master v2 support 'Monitor only' mode where control is disabled so you can 
move the mouse in the Master window or press keys, the Slave will not be 
disturbed.

- Can I write messages for the end-user from the Master, starting a CHAT 
session?
- Yes. You just have to open a text editor and type your text. The user will 
see it in real-time. He can even answer just by typing his answer below your 
text. This is chat without a dedicated application. You can even 
send/receive text via the Clipboard if you wish, or draw on the same 
drawing, each person adding or correcting the work in progress. You can do 
this with ANY kind of program.

- May I use a Master to reboot or shut-down a Slave?
- Yes. You will have to reconnect once the machine have booted (end of 
Windows terminates any Windows program and Slave makes no exception, sorry). 
But you can also lock-up a distant PC. It may be useful in case of 
emergency. 

- How Remote-Anything handles different resolutions between Master and 
Slave?
- It is easier to work when the Master works in a higher resolution than the 
Slave because you can see the whole distant screen. However, if it is not 
possible due to video card limitations, the Master window offers scroll-bars 
that allow panning of the bigger distant desktop. There is also a 
full-screen mode which is handy when both desktops have the same size or 
when the distant desktop is bigger (in that case, you can pan the distant 
screen just by putting the mouse cursor on the limits of the local screen). 
All the resolutions are supported (from 640x400 to 1600x1280 and higher).

- How Remote-Anything handles different color depth between Master and 
Slave?
- Remote-Anything supports the 8-Bit, 16-Bit, 24-Bit, and 32-Bit color 
depths. Some color distortion can occur when using color reduction. This is 
due to an inability to convert colors accurately. To solve this problem, use 
the same color depth for both Master and Slave (16-Bit is a good choice). If 
you absolutely want colors to be identical to original, disable the color 
compression (option available in version 2.0).

- Is Remote-Anything compatible with my old video cards and brand new video 
cards?
- Remote-Anything supports the latest technology like AGP but also the old 
standards. In fact, some video cards may fail to support basic graphic 
Windows functions used by Remote-Anything. This is because the video card 
drivers do not support those functions. In that case, check for the last 
version of those drivers with the video card manufacturer.
ATI, Cirrus Logic, Colorgraphics, Compaq, Dell, Diamond, Matrox, STB, 
Trident, Tseng Labs, and many other manufacturers sell cards that have been 
tested successfully. In case of doubt, download the TRIAL version.

- Can more than one Master work on the same Slave at the same time?
- Yes.

- Can one Master work on different Slaves at the same time?
- Yes.

- Can I install Remote-Anything without end-user input?
- Yes, the one-click-install allows silent installation and can be deployed 
on thousands of stations. By e-mail for example. The user will only have to 
click on the install icon. That's all. Contact us if you need to distribute 
RA on a huge number of PCs: we will define personalized default passwords 
and port numbers for you.
A similar one-click uninstall utility is provided but you can uninstall 
remotely of course.

- Can end-users use the Slave to take control of the Master?
- No. This is one of the reasons that make Remote-Anything is REALLY safe. 
This is a one-way remote control tool. You can however allow end-users to 
take control of the Master's PC just by giving them a Master and a password 
if you installed a Slave on the machine where the Master is running.

- How do I know what PCs are ready to be contacted by Master?
- When started, Master is automatically detecting the Slaves over a local 
network and displays a list of both IP addresses and DNS names. Just pick-up 
one and enter your password, you get connected! Dynamic IP addresses are 
detected too, this is useful with portables for example.

- What an end-user can do with the Slave?
- Nothing. The Slave is a 80 KB silent tool without user-interface (and even 
without existence in the Task-List). It acts only as a server for incoming 
connections made by Masters. If found, the Slave cannot be deleted by the 
user because the file is in use. You have to uninstall it to delete or 
modify the file.

- What does mean 'encrypted'?
- It means that nothing that goes over the network between Masters and 
Slaves can be readen if intercepted. This is true for requests, data and 
screen-shots.

- Why Remote-Anything is the SAFEST way to access to remote computers?
- If someone steals your password and your copy of Remote-Anything Master 
(or your whole hard-disk!), he will not be able to access the Slave(s) you 
installed. Why? Simply because the Remote-Anything License scheme is based 
on the BIOS of your PC. If no valid UserKey corresponding to the BiosKey is 
available, Remote-Anything does not allow you to establish connections with 
Slaves. To be able to violate the security of your Slave(s) someone will 
have to steal your password AND the PC where the Master is installed.
Remote-Anything is also protected against viruses, disk errors, and external 
file corruption by an automatic encrypted integrity control routine each 
time it is run. This way, it will always behave as expected if everything is 
normal -or will not allow to establish connections- if something weird 
happened.

- How security is implemented?
- Remote-Anything Slaves are installed with a password. Masters need this 
password to build an encryption key which is used to encode random bytes 
sent by the Slave during the authentication process. If the Master has been 
authenticated successfully, it means that it used the right authentication 
protocol, used the right password to build the right encryption key, and 
used the right encryption algorithm. As the password is NOT stored at the 
Master's place, and considering that the password is never sent over the 
network during the session, we can say 

- How do you calculate version numbers'?
- Each major release increments the first digit (1.0.0, 2.0.0, etc.) There 
is a major release every 2 years

- The second digit indicates an intermediate release (2.0.0 for the first 
year, 2.1.0 for the second year, etc.)

- The month is specified in the third and fourth digits (2.0.01 means 
january, 2.0.02 means february, etc.)
We choosed this system because as our products are evolving very quickly, we 
wanted to make it simple for everybody to know the release date so clients 
could update their copy knowing what they do.
See also What's New in RA for an history of the modifications and 
enhancements.


NT SPECIFIC
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- What conditions should I meet to install Remote-Anything on NT?
- You need to have administrator privileges to install a Slave. Once the 
Slave service is installed, YOU HAVE TO RUN IT: do it from the Control Panel 
or use the 'net start' command (C:\Windows> net start slave). Then, REBOOT 
your PC. You can then use a Master to send a Ctrl+Alt+Del to the Slave, this 
will allow you to log on (keep in mind that you are not obliged to open a 
Windows session to use some functions of Remote-Anything). As 
Remote-Anything is running as a service, you can log in remotely, do some 
work, and log out again.

- When I run the Slave from the Control Panel, I have the error 'Invalid 
service name'. What can I do?
- It means that the system could not find the Slave.exe file. Copy it in 
your WinNT directory and run again the Slave. It should work now.

- Remote-Anything always causes a Blue Screen on NT. What can I do?
- Install Service Pack 3 or later. Keep in mind that if you modified 
componenents on your system you have to re-install the Service Pack. Make 
sure also that you have the very last versions of both graphic and network 
drivers. RA puts a huge load on them so they may show up bugs. RA works for 
thousands of NT users so please check out your system before asking for a 
patch.

- Remote-Anything seems to be less responsive on NT than on 98. What can I 
do?
- In NT Service Pack 6, Microsoft modified the TCP/IP stack so the Nagle's 
algorithm cannot be disabled. This leads the TCP/IP stack to collect small 
packets before sending them, leading to a general better use of the 
bandwidth, but a poor real-time behavior. If you have the choice, STAY with 
Service Pack 5...

- When I log into a distant PC RA closes the connection and I have to 
reconnect! What happens?
- If the distant PC is running a screen saver in 640x400 while the desktop 
resolution is 600x800, loggin in will change the current resolution, leading 
to a connection close because the Master does not support (yet) dynamic 
screen resolution changes.

- How do I send a Ctrl-Alt-Del to log into NT?
- Select the pull down menu option 'Send Ctrl+Alt+Del'. This is necessary 
since the Ctrl+Alt+Del will be interpreted on the local PC. Other 
combinations of keys like Alt+Tab and Ctrl+Esc are also provided for the 
same reason, check out the documentation for more details.


HINTS & TROUBLESHOOTING
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- How do I know if a Master is connected on my Slave PC?
- The Slave in invisible in the task list, so how can you see it working? To 
speedup connections the Slave is disabling some features like FONT SMOOTHING 
or MOUSETRAILS. By setting up those options and watching if they are still 
active you can notice an incoming connection. More generally, it is easy to 
know what connections are established on your PC: just open a DOS Box and 
type 'netstat -na' (without quotes). It will list the listening and 
established connections (HTTP, FTP, RA, etc.). If you see a process 
listening on port 4000, then a Slave is waiting for incoming connections. If 
your Slave works with another port number, look for that one.

- How may I speedup a connection?
- Try the 'Active Window Updates' menu option instead of the 'FullScreen 
Updates' default) 
* reduce the size of the Window you are working on and select the 'Active 
Window Updates' menu option
- limit the number of opened applications at the same time or minimize a few 
Windows
* reduce the resolution of the Slave (640x480 or 600x800 instead of 
1600x1280)
* use the lowest possible color depth on the Slave (8-Bit is the fastest, 
but 16-Bit is good)
* use the 16-Bit color depth for Master (this prevents Master from getting 
Slaves palettes if used in 8-Bit)
* disable distant PC's wallpaper (Master can do it remotely)
* disable data compression and error correction over a LAN
* use data compression over a dial-up PPP connection
* disable the data encryption if available in your version
* avoid using animated cursors, animated menus, and animated tips
* avoid using shades in windows' title bars (use only plain color)
* use a high speed recent graphic adapter (it may be faster by a 20 factor!)
* use a high speed network adapter or modem 
* How to configure my PCs to use TCP/IP?
* It will take two minutes to do it for each PC (your PCs have to be 
connected to a local network):
1) Install Microsoft TCP/IP protocol using the Network icon from the Control 
Panel.
2) Select the newly installed TCP/IP that is bound to your Network Adapter.
3) Click the Properties button. The only information required for a simple 
PC to PC connection is the IP Address. You need a unique IP Address for each 
machine.
   Ex.: - Machine A: IP address: 192.168.100.10  subnet: 255.255.255.0
        - Machine B: IP address: 192.168.100.11  subnet: 255.255.255.0
4) Save these settings and reboot your PCs. Now, you can use 
Remote-Anything.

- How do I find the IP address of the Internet connection on a Slave 
machine?
- On Windows 95 there is a tool called WINIPCFG. Windows NT has an 
equivalent utility called IPCONFIG. Running one of this programs will 
display your local adapter and dial up adapter IP addresses. 

- I see the distant desktop but Master does not allow me to move the mouse 
or run programs!
- The Menu of the Master can be accessed once the connection is established. 
Just click with the right mouse button on the sun icon (on the title bar of 
the Master) and you will get the pull-down Menu.

- Slave displays the error message 'Can't get functions from RA_MSG'. What 
can I do?
- Delete the file RA_MSG.DLL from your Windows directory (usually 
C:\Windows). This message came because you had an old version of RA 
installed. Run Slave again, it works now.

- Master fails to connect to Slave and quit without error message or freeze 
when building the distant screen. What can I do?
- Reboot the Slave PC, it will work now. This error comes from the erratic 
way Windows is caching data from the Registry: sometimes, the data is 
available, sometimes you have to restart Windows to really flush the 
cache...

- Master displays the error message 'Can't connect to Slave'. What can I do?
- Check that you installed the Slave on a different PC from the one you are 
using the Master.
* Check that the two different PCs you are using are connected by a working 
TCP/IP network.
* Make sure you try FIRST to test RA on a LAN whether testing it on a WAN or 
via the Internet (step by step, please).
* Uninstall the Slave and reinstall it (see the next question for a quick 
way to do it).
* If you cannot manage to make it run on a PC, try on another one.
* If you changed the port number for the Slave, do the same for the Master.
  (Note that the Demo mode does not allow to use other ports than 4000 and 
  other passwords than 'trial')
* Remote-Anything requires a working TCP/IP network, so please make sure 
that you check the following points before assuming it is a Remote-Anything 
problem (thousands of persons installed it successfuly): 
1) Open a DOS Box and ping the Slave PC from the Master PC (type 'ping 
192.168.210.180' replacing 192.168.210.180 by the IP address used by your 
Slave).
2) Make sure that the Slave is running on the distant PC (check the 'How do 
I know if a Master is connected on my Slave PC?' question above).
3) The Slave listens on default port 4000. Try to telnet to this port from 
the Master PC.
4) Check your typing of the IP Address in the Master Connection Dialog Box.  
5) Try using an IP address instead of a name ('192.168.210.180' instead of 
'Test_pc').
6) Check if you have firewalls or proxies which could deny access.
7) Try to run the Master, or the Slave, or both, on different PCs to find 
where the problem comes from.
(Ask your system administrator to help you if you do not know how to 
proceed)

- Master displays the error message 'Bad Password' and quits. What can I do?
- It means that the password you are typing in the Master is NOT the 
password used by the Slave.
This can happend if you modified the Slave password while using a Master in 
demo mode. In this case, you cannot access the Slave because the only 
password a Master in demo mode can send for authentication is 'trial' 
(whatever you type in the password entry field). To solve your problem, you 
have to run the Slave in a DOS box like this:
    C:\Windows> Slave -i your_password trial 
This will redefine 'trial' as the password for your Slave and the Demo 
Master will be able to access it.
It can happend also if you are registered but use a bad password (you forgot 
the good one). In this case, you have to uninstall the Slave and re-install 
it with a new password. To uninstall a Slave you are supposed to use the 
password, but you do not remember this password! So, follow the steps below 
to get out from this bad situation (or get the generic uninstall program 
from our Web site):
1) Go to the Windows Start Menu (the menu you use to quit Windows) and 
choose the 'Run' option. Type: Regedit and click the OK button. Now, go to 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/TWD and DELETE this entry. Doing this, you 
cleaned the place. Do this for each PC where the Slaves have been installed.
2) Make sure that you have Slave.exe in your C:\Windows directory. If that's 
not the case, you have to copy Slave.exe from your last remote-trial.zip 
archive file to the C:\Windows (or to the equivalent directory for you) and 
open a DOS box where you type:
    C:\Windows> slave (with no arguments if you use the trial version, or 
with '-i password' if you are registered)
Do this on each C:\Windows directory of each PC you want to access with 
Master.
3) Come back to the PC where the Master.exe is and try to access your 
distant PCs, typing 'trial' as the UserKey and as the password if you are in 
demo mode (or your password if you are registered).


LICENSES
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- How many Licenses do I have with the $99 'Small-Business Pack'?
- 1 Master and 5 Slaves. It means that you can access 5 PCs remotely from 1 
other PC. You can purchase additional licenses for more Masters and more 
Slaves. Prices are listed on the 'Buy Now' page.

- If I change my PC, do I have to order another UserKey?
- UserKeys are unique for each PC, so if you change your PC, you have to get 
another UserKey. This service is free of charges one time a year (most of us 
do not change their PC(s) so often). We are flexible with licenses, so, if 
you have a specific need, we will find a solution with you. Contact us for 
details.

- Are Site Licenses available?
- Site Licenses are available for locations with over 500 users. Unlimited 
enterprise Licenses are available for worldwide corporate networks. Prices 
are lower for big quantities. Contact us for details.

