Online Help

Connecting to an office pc from home

Anyone wanting to connect to their work pc, and having difficulty here's what you can do now. Figure many could use this so if you wanna use it as a little helper file go ahead.

Step 1 - your home machine would act as server - you need to know what ports are available. Your ISP may not look upon this kindly, so read your eula, or take a risk on your own terms.
how to find out available ports :
a: go to gibson research security
http://www.grc.com/default.htm
b: scroll down to ShieldsUP! and click the link
c: your firewall would need to be down temporarily. You need an OPEN port to host a server - common port search should turn up a few.

Step 2 - If you have difficulty running vnc listener at home on the open port you have, you can use a router to do port forwarding. Enable port forwarding of both TCP and UDP. I missed the UDP originally, and dont know if i just got lucky last night, but it's been working since i added UDP. if your listener on your home machine is on port 5500, and your open port is 567, then you need to forward port 5500 locally over 567 globally for both protocols.

Step 3 - you have an open port, and you know your router's IP. if your IP is a.b.c.d, and your open port you chose to host on was spam, then at your work machine, right click on your server, add client "a.b.c.d:spam"

Making it easier
- you dont HAVE to remember your ip
- you don have to be at work to add the client.

Free name
You can get a free name at http://www.no-ip.com and http://dyndns.com
I signed up for free with dyndns, and use an auto updater program from kana solution (free) so that i never have to worry about my ip changing. I just plug in blahblah.ath.cx instead of my ip.

how to connect to work from home WITHOUT having to use someone at work to add your server
OK this is more of a silly program I did.
inorder to VNC to your work machine, you'd have to be AT work right click on the vnc icon, add new client, and type your ip:port to establish the connection, THEN at home, your computer would be viewing the office pc.

To automatically get past this this is what I did
1: from home, i send an email to my workplace. Outlook is always running. on recieving a message with the subject "establish home vnc" a RULE is run to execute a program. This program minimizes all windows, looks for the server icon in the tray, right clicks, presses n for new client, and types in my ip:port.

2: the program...

script source:

AutoItSetOption("MouseCoordMode",1)
AutoItSetOption("SendKeyDelay", 50)

;look for colors for the uvnc server
Send("#d");minimize it all
sleep(2000)
$x = 1400
$y = 1160
While ((PixelGetColor($x, $y) <> 13030883) Or
(PixelGetColor($x+6, $y+5) <> 1447447) Or
(PixelGetColor($x-1, $y+9) <> 6990030) Or
(PixelGetColor($x+7, $y+4) <> 13422031) Or
(PixelGetColor($x+3, $y+3) <> 13553358) Or
(PixelGetColor($x+4, $y+5) <> 328965))
$x = $x + 1
if ($x > 1530) Then
$x = 1400
$y = $y + 1
EndIf
If ($y > 1190) Then Exit;
WEnd
;look for colors for uvnc done, $x and $y location of icon

MouseClick("right",$x,$y,1,0)
sleep(1000)
send("n")
sleep(1000)
send("{TAB}{TAB}Blahblah.ath.cx:456{ENTER}")

This program can be run or compiled in a macro program known as AutoIT
when compiled, set the email client to run that executable.

Note 1- the work pc can't be using a pasword after screensaver - this obviously wont type it in.
Note 2- all those getpixelcolor statements need to be on one line to compile, it did that for readability
Note 3- that is for a 1600x1200 screen.
rectangle scanned is defined on 4 lines :
$x = 1400 ; my max res - 200
$y = 1160 ; my max res - 40 (2 level taskbar)
if ($x > 1530) Then ; max res - 70 (clock doesnt need to be scanned)
If ($y > 1190) Then Exit ; max res - 10 end of icons.
use your max screen res to adjust values, and tweak.

than a recorded macro...

winvnc -kill
start winvnc -run