Vista - Remote Assistance Vista to XP

Remote assistance is the tool that my helpdesk lives by. We can't have all
our users on Vista for several years, that said.


Why can't I offer remote assistance from Vista to XP computers like I can XP
to XP? The session things it is connected but you can't see anything.
Quote from the help on Vista, "You cannot offer Windows Remote Assistance
from later versions of Windows to either Windows XP or Windows Server 2003."

So how am I supposed to offer assistance to all my XP users? Make them
solicit me? Hah, you don't know my users do you?

Dual boot with XP?

Regards,
Mark

Not in a production environment.

"Marky P" <mark@pringle.plus.com> wrote in message
news:%23v0y9xWHHHA.4056@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Dual boot with XP?
>
> Regards,
> Mark
>

So do you have any info for this or what?

"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

> Not in a production environment.
>
> "Marky P" <mark@pringle.plus.com> wrote in message
> news:%23v0y9xWHHHA.4056@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> > Dual boot with XP?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mark
> >
>

Without hiding the Vista volume from XP with a third party boot manager, the
XP VSS driver will remove Vista VSS files when you boot into XP.
Volsnap.sys enumerates all VSS files system wide. It will determine that
the Vista VSS files are corrupt and delete them to protect the user from
attempting to restore from a corrupt file. This means that all of the Vista
system restore points, previous versions of files, etc. are lost. A user
can accept this limitation if he wants to but he does so at his own peril
and needs to be aware of the risk.

Microsoft says that the XP and Vista volsnap.sys drivers are incompatible
and although the Vista driver understands XP VSS files, the XP vss driver
does not understand Vista VSS files. It would take an extensive rewrite to
XP to resolve the issue. MS looked at this for almost two years and decided
not to do the rewrite so the issue will not be addressed.

Those with Vista Ultimate can prevent the problem by using BitLocker.

This has been discussed in this newsgroup repeatedly over the past months.
Search on "volsnap.sys" and "vss."

"Drew" <Drew@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BDAC5771-152A-49A7-9456-D0231A20235E@microsoft.com...
> So do you have any info for this or what?
>
> "Colin Barnhorst" wrote:
>
>> Not in a production environment.
>>
>> "Marky P" <mark@pringle.plus.com> wrote in message
>> news:%23v0y9xWHHHA.4056@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> > Dual boot with XP?
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Mark
>> >
>>

This thread has completly left the topic. This is not about a dual boot.

It is about offering remote assistance. Why can't you offer remote
assistance from a Vista machien to an XP machine?



"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

> Without hiding the Vista volume from XP with a third party boot manager, the
> XP VSS driver will remove Vista VSS files when you boot into XP.
> Volsnap.sys enumerates all VSS files system wide. It will determine that
> the Vista VSS files are corrupt and delete them to protect the user from
> attempting to restore from a corrupt file. This means that all of the Vista
> system restore points, previous versions of files, etc. are lost. A user
> can accept this limitation if he wants to but he does so at his own peril
> and needs to be aware of the risk.
>
> Microsoft says that the XP and Vista volsnap.sys drivers are incompatible
> and although the Vista driver understands XP VSS files, the XP vss driver
> does not understand Vista VSS files. It would take an extensive rewrite to
> XP to resolve the issue. MS looked at this for almost two years and decided
> not to do the rewrite so the issue will not be addressed.
>
> Those with Vista Ultimate can prevent the problem by using BitLocker.
>
> This has been discussed in this newsgroup repeatedly over the past months.
> Search on "volsnap.sys" and "vss."
>
> "Drew" <Drew@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:BDAC5771-152A-49A7-9456-D0231A20235E@microsoft.com...
> > So do you have any info for this or what?
> >
> > "Colin Barnhorst" wrote:
> >
> >> Not in a production environment.
> >>
> >> "Marky P" <mark@pringle.plus.com> wrote in message
> >> news:%23v0y9xWHHHA.4056@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> >> > Dual boot with XP?
> >> >
> >> > Regards,
> >> > Mark
> >> >
> >>
>

The help text in Vista is wrong and will be corrected.
- You CAN offer RA from Vista to XP.
- You CANNOT offer RA from XP to Vista.
The expectation is that helpers trying to help Vista users will be on Vista
themselves.

Ok so this establishes that it should be supported, but why doesn't it work.

With Vista on my PC I can no longer provide support to several customers via
RA and the Internet.

I upgraded to Vista Business from XP2 SP2 and now when I get invitations
from my customers still on XP I get the invitation via Live Messenger, click
on Accept and nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.

If I try to go the other way and offer RA, Vista claims the remote computer
does not have RA enabled, but I know it does because I set them up and
regularly connected via RA using XP. I can also verify this by connecting
from a laptop that is still running XP.

Any ideas?

"JThek [MS]" wrote:

> The help text in Vista is wrong and will be corrected.
> - You CAN offer RA from Vista to XP.
> - You CANNOT offer RA from XP to Vista.
> The expectation is that helpers trying to help Vista users will be on Vista
> themselves.
>

Suggestions:
1. Verify that you can use RA without Messenger (save RA invitation to a
file on XP, copy file to vista and then launch msra.exe on Vista and use
offer mode and the saved file)
3. This should work. Then make sure both machines are on the latest release
of Live Messenger


"Mike Hanson" wrote:

> Ok so this establishes that it should be supported, but why doesn't it work.
>
> With Vista on my PC I can no longer provide support to several customers via
> RA and the Internet.
>
> I upgraded to Vista Business from XP2 SP2 and now when I get invitations
> from my customers still on XP I get the invitation via Live Messenger, click
> on Accept and nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.
>
> If I try to go the other way and offer RA, Vista claims the remote computer
> does not have RA enabled, but I know it does because I set them up and
> regularly connected via RA using XP. I can also verify this by connecting
> from a laptop that is still running XP.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> "JThek [MS]" wrote:
>
> > The help text in Vista is wrong and will be corrected.
> > - You CAN offer RA from Vista to XP.
> > - You CANNOT offer RA from XP to Vista.
> > The expectation is that helpers trying to help Vista users will be on Vista
> > themselves.
> >

On the XP machine save the RA invitation to a file, transfer the file to
Vista machine and launch msra.exe. Offer RA from Vista using the saved file
and make sure you can connect to the XP machine successfully.

Verify that both mchines have the latest version of Live Messenger.

"Mike Hanson" wrote:

> Ok so this establishes that it should be supported, but why doesn't it work.
>
> With Vista on my PC I can no longer provide support to several customers via
> RA and the Internet.
>
> I upgraded to Vista Business from XP2 SP2 and now when I get invitations
> from my customers still on XP I get the invitation via Live Messenger, click
> on Accept and nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.
>
> If I try to go the other way and offer RA, Vista claims the remote computer
> does not have RA enabled, but I know it does because I set them up and
> regularly connected via RA using XP. I can also verify this by connecting
> from a laptop that is still running XP.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> "JThek [MS]" wrote:
>
> > The help text in Vista is wrong and will be corrected.
> > - You CAN offer RA from Vista to XP.
> > - You CANNOT offer RA from XP to Vista.
> > The expectation is that helpers trying to help Vista users will be on Vista
> > themselves.
> >