Learn Windows XP Professional in 15 Minutes a Week: Remote Assistance Page 2

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] - What your Start Menu options look like all depend on how you have the menu set. If you are using the Classic Start Menu, you would not see My Computer as a selection to right click on.

I seem to continually repeat this from article to article, but it is important to stress the Windows XP Professional exam rarely tests you on Classic anything. You need to know how to get from Windows XP Professional settings to Classic and back, but in 90% of the cases you're going to find instructions laid out in the Windows XP Professional vein. I will do my best to point out alternatives in the [NOTES FROM THE FIELD] section as I have done here.

Local Administrators and certain permitted individuals have the rights to make configuration settings for the local systems to allow or prevent remote assistance invitations. Once the system is properly configured by the Administrator, any user can make a request for remote assistance.

After the Properties page has been brought up for a local system, it can be set to allow Remote Assistance invitations by selecting the Allow Remote Assistance invitations to be sent from this computer checkbox on the Remote tab.

Once this option is set, the Advanced button becomes available which displays the Remote Assistance Settings dialog box when selected.

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] - The default settings are shown in the image above. You can configure the Invitation settings in the drop down menu of numbers in a range from 1 to 99, and the definition box to the right can be set to MINUTES, HOURS, or DAYS.

The default option of Allow This Computer To Be Controlled Remotely is selected, which will allow the person offering the assistance to take over the full control of the local system. Clearing this check box allows the remote user only the ability to view a remote session. (Think of it as a "Read Only" session.)

Page 3: Remote Assistance via the Windows Messenger