I got my not-too-tech-savvy mother a PC last year, which she absolutely loves because she hadn’t had a desktop for a long time and likes being able to play games on it and watch Youtube. Of course, she occasionally runs into tech problems that I either can’t diagnose or can’t talk her through fixing over the phone, and I have to find time to make it over to her place so I can do whatever 10-second fix is causing her problems. For example, she’s recently been having problems with Youtube’s war on adblockers and had to turn her adblocker off, but since she uses white noise videos as a sleep aid, it was messing her up late at night when it’d abruptly cut to a PSA about gun control, and while updating uBlock Origin is easy enough I wasn’t able to get her to understand what to do over the phone so I had to go to her apartment and do it for her.
It’d be a lot easier if I could install some remote access software on her PC, the kind that tech support in big businesses use to log into physically distant computers and fix problems with them, so that when she has a problem I can just log into her PC from home, do the fix, and sign back out.
Can anyone recommend such a program that’s user-friendly, easy to install and access, and affordable?
I use Teamviewer to connect to my mother’s computer to help her out. It requires her to read the passcode to me to permit the connection and it can take a minute for her to understand that bit.
I asked this same question for the same reason 3 years ago and got some excellent replies that the OP might get value from. Note who answered first last time too:
The consensus then was Teamviewer, and it worked very well for me.
I had been using Teamviewer professionally and privately for years before I also fell into this trap a few months ago. I installed AnyDesk instead on my and my mother’s laptop, and it works as well as Teamviewer for me, though it’s not quite as user-friendly as TV. But I can deal with that, and I configured it on my mother’s side so that it’s always running, with a fixed password that I know and have saved in my AnyDesk app, so if I want to connect she doesn’t have to do anything.
I’ve been using TeamViewer for several years to support my wife’s machine when I travel (well, I haven’t traveled since 2/28/2020, but I had been. And I guess that means more than “several” years!)
They shut me down a couple of times, despite having it on a total of three machines and not having used it at all recently when they did so. I went thorugh the appeals process and they reinstated it each time.
That hasn’t happened lately; I’m guessing they got wiser, but who knows.
I used to use LogMeIn, which I liked better, but it went non-free and given that I needed it about once a year (and not at all since 2020, obviously) I switched.
VNC is of course the other choice, if you can make it secure enough for your needs.
Seconded or thirded the recommendation for TeamViewer. But it can be set up with a ‘remembered’ username/password, which can then be embedded in your computer, so you can seamlessly connect to her desktop. That’s how I supported my then 99-year-old Mom during the pandemic.
ETA: I think you actually have to set up a (free) account on the TeamViewer host site, so it can be validated.
Generally, the people you are helping via Remote Desktop are very non-technical types, who have no interest in learning about it. Like his 99-year-old mother. So this isn’t a weakness in Remote Desktop.
But not if you’re teaching them something they want to know how to do. Like operate the updated version of some website they frequent. Or add bold text to their email writing repertoire.
I probably did about as much teaching as fixing. A lot of the teaching was repetitive because it didn’t stick real well. Old folks are like that.
RDC also has the issue of operating under the context of the remote logged in user, instead of working “over the shoulder” RDC will take over/replace the local user’s session assuming the remote user is using the same credentials. Depending on what you are trying to help with, this may or may not be an issue.
I use RemotePC, which I think is $30/year (but they often have discounts) and works fine. You set it up once on the other computer and then it just is available when you need to come in remotely.