Remote Assistance stopped working

I have been using Remote Assistance for a number of years to provide
help to my two friends who reside 7000 miles away. We all were using
Windows XP Professional when we started using Remote Assistance. We all
switched the OS to Windows Vista Ultimate. Remote Assistance continued
working after that.

Then, recently I have found that it no longer works. The session ends
with a message "The person you are trying to help isn't responding".
Symptom is the same with either one of my friends. Immediately after the
above error message, a new dialogue window is displayed which accepts IP
for direct connection but this also fails connection.

I picked a local friend who uses Windows Vista Ultimate box, and tried
Remote Assistance. The result was no problem connecting to his PC for
Remote Assistance session.

Other thing I have done: Executing in command prompt "netsh inerface tcp
set global autotuninglevel=disabled"(sans quotes) which was suggested at
ChicagoTech.com forum even though I did not know what exactly this
command does.

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

Hi,

That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning which has issues with a
small number of network hardware. It wouldn't really have much of an effect as you would be
seeing far larger problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading, etc.) if that
were the problem.

Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers, software firewalls, etc.?

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
--


"churin" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I have been using Remote Assistance for a number of years to provide help to my two friends
> who reside 7000 miles away. We all were using Windows XP Professional when we started using
> Remote Assistance. We all switched the OS to Windows Vista Ultimate. Remote Assistance
> continued working after that.
>
> Then, recently I have found that it no longer works. The session ends with a message "The
> person you are trying to help isn't responding". Symptom is the same with either one of my
> friends. Immediately after the above error message, a new dialogue window is displayed
> which accepts IP for direct connection but this also fails connection.
>
> I picked a local friend who uses Windows Vista Ultimate box, and tried Remote Assistance.
> The result was no problem connecting to his PC for Remote Assistance session.
>
> Other thing I have done: Executing in command prompt "netsh inerface tcp set global
> autotuninglevel=disabled"(sans quotes) which was suggested at ChicagoTech.com forum even
> though I did not know what exactly this command does.
>
> Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
>
>
>

Hi,

I assume that I can undo what I did by netsh command, by executing the
same command except =diable is replaced with =enable. Is this correct?

Getting back to the topic:
PCs of mine, my two distant friends and my local friend are all behind
routers and do not use any third party firewall. The all routers are
UP&P enabled. Vista's built-in firewall are turned on for all PCs. I set
up their home network. If there is any missing info, please post.


Jonathan Kay [MVP] wrote:
> Hi,
>
> That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning which has issues with a
> small number of network hardware. It wouldn't really have much of an effect as you would be
> seeing far larger problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading, etc.) if that
> were the problem.
>
> Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers, software firewalls, etc.?
>

Additional findings as follows:

I tried Remote Assistance(RA) with one of the distance friends this
morning in two different ways.

1) Responding RA request through WLM --> Failed with the following message:

Rmote Assistance cannot make the connection. The person you are trying
to help might have closed Remote Assistance.

2) Direct connection by global IP --> Failed with the following message:

Your offer to help could not be completed. Either Remote Assistance is
unable to find the remote computer or you do not have permission to
connect to the remote computer. Verify that the computer name and
permission are correct, and then try again.

I wanted to try Remote Desktop and attempted to have him set up port
forwarding but neither of IE or FFox could access the router. Error
messages as followsNote these are translation of the messages in
foreign language)

IE --> IE can not open this page.
FFox --> Connection has been reset. Connection to the server is reset
while reading the web page.

The router is Linksys WRT54G and its address is 192.168.1.1

The above may be clue to solve my problem but I am unable to utilize for
solving the problem.

Could this be due to Windows Updates or virus?

churin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I assume that I can undo what I did by netsh command, by executing the
> same command except =diable is replaced with =enable. Is this correct?
>
> Getting back to the topic:
> PCs of mine, my two distant friends and my local friend are all behind
> routers and do not use any third party firewall. The all routers are
> UP&P enabled. Vista's built-in firewall are turned on for all PCs. I set
> up their home network. If there is any missing info, please post.
>
>
> Jonathan Kay [MVP] wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning
>> which has issues with a small number of network hardware. It wouldn't
>> really have much of an effect as you would be seeing far larger
>> problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading, etc.) if
>> that were the problem.
>>
>> Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers, software
>> firewalls, etc.?
>>

Jonathan,

The problem has been resolved. The culprit was that the Network was set
as "Public" for some reason so that the Firewall exception for RA was
turned off. Thank you anyway for trying to help me.

The router problem(not accessible from browser) found during the trouble
shooting is now determined to be unrelated to the RA problem. The router
appears working fine except this problem. Maybe pressing the reset
button is what the sick router needs to cure the problem but I will
postpone doing so until absolute need arise in the future.

churin wrote:
> Additional findings as follows:
>
> I tried Remote Assistance(RA) with one of the distance friends this
> morning in two different ways.
>
> 1) Responding RA request through WLM --> Failed with the following message:
>
> Rmote Assistance cannot make the connection. The person you are trying
> to help might have closed Remote Assistance.
>
> 2) Direct connection by global IP --> Failed with the following message:
>
> Your offer to help could not be completed. Either Remote Assistance is
> unable to find the remote computer or you do not have permission to
> connect to the remote computer. Verify that the computer name and
> permission are correct, and then try again.
>
> I wanted to try Remote Desktop and attempted to have him set up port
> forwarding but neither of IE or FFox could access the router. Error
> messages as followsNote these are translation of the messages in
> foreign language)
>
> IE --> IE can not open this page.
> FFox --> Connection has been reset. Connection to the server is reset
> while reading the web page.
>
> The router is Linksys WRT54G and its address is 192.168.1.1
>
> The above may be clue to solve my problem but I am unable to utilize for
> solving the problem.
>
> Could this be due to Windows Updates or virus?
>
> churin wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I assume that I can undo what I did by netsh command, by executing the
>> same command except =diable is replaced with =enable. Is this correct?
>>
>> Getting back to the topic:
>> PCs of mine, my two distant friends and my local friend are all behind
>> routers and do not use any third party firewall. The all routers are
>> UP&P enabled. Vista's built-in firewall are turned on for all PCs. I
>> set up their home network. If there is any missing info, please post.
>>
>>
>> Jonathan Kay [MVP] wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning
>>> which has issues with a small number of network hardware. It
>>> wouldn't really have much of an effect as you would be seeing far
>>> larger problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading,
>>> etc.) if that were the problem.
>>>
>>> Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers,
>>> software firewalls, etc.?
>>>

The problem has been resolved. The culprit was that the Network was set
as "Public" for some reason so that the Firewall exception for RA was
turned off.

I suspected the RA user's network setting but found that it was my
network which has to be corrected. I do not know why RA with my local
friend did not have any problem.

Thank you anyway for trying to help me.


Jonathan Kay [MVP] wrote:
> Hi,
>
> That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning which has issues with a
> small number of network hardware. It wouldn't really have much of an effect as you would be
> seeing far larger problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading, etc.) if that
> were the problem.
>
> Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers, software firewalls, etc.?
>

Greetings,

Ah, that'll do it, glad that's sorted out

In Vista RA, there's actually supposed to be some work done to be able to connect even behind
firewalls using the IPv6 Toredo support, although I've never seen it actually work very well.
This may be why it worked that one time with your other friend.

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
--


"churin" <> wrote in message
news:...
> The problem has been resolved. The culprit was that the Network was set as "Public" for
> some reason so that the Firewall exception for RA was turned off.
>
> I suspected the RA user's network setting but found that it was my network which has to be
> corrected. I do not know why RA with my local friend did not have any problem.
>
> Thank you anyway for trying to help me.
>
>
> Jonathan Kay [MVP] wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> That netsh command just disables Vista's automatic network tuning which has issues with a
>> small number of network hardware. It wouldn't really have much of an effect as you would
>> be seeing far larger problems than just RA not connecting (web sites not loading, etc.) if
>> that were the problem.
>>
>> Any idea what network setup your friends are using? Routers, software firewalls, etc.?
>>