My parents, who live some distance away, have just bought a new PC running Windows XP. At work, I can "proxy" someone else's machine and talk them through whatever (non-computer) work they need help with. I can see what is on their screen and control their computer as if I were sitting at their desk. Is there anything similar for home PCs?
Kevin Greer
Jack Schofield: Remote Assistance is already built into Windows XP, and you can control your parents' PC remotely via Windows Messenger. They can select Tools in that program, then Ask for Remote Assistance, to send you an instant message or email. You then enter a password and click the Take Control button. See www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gethelp/remoteassist/. The catch is that both computers must be running Windows XP. However, you don't need to buy XP to do this. Microsoft Windows NetMeeting 3 has been providing Remote Desktop Sharing for years, for free. See www.microsoft.com/windows/NetMeeting/Features/RDS.
Alternatives include VNC (Virtual Network Computing), which is free from AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge ), PC Anywhere and www.laplink.com. Many people use these programs, not to control someone else's PC, but to access their own, when they are out.
User ID galore
Even with light use of the internet, I have accumulated something in the order of 50 different user IDs and passwords, which are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Surely someone has attempted to provide a decent solution. I use Windows 95.
Peter Mahoney
London
JS: There are several programs that will look after passwords, and you can find a brief round-up at bipolar or go to hotfiles, select PC Downloads and type password keeper into the search box. Gregory Braun's Password Keeper 2000 seems to be quite well regarded.
In the longer term, many companies are working towards a "single sign-on", including Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo. For example, one option in Windows XP is to log on to your PC using your Microsoft.Net Passport ID. Everyone who uses Hotmail has one. This provides access to Hotmail and many other websites (there's a list at www.passport.com ) without logging on again. You can edit your details at www.passport.com . At the moment, I would not trust any of these systems for anything serious, such as shopping or banking.
Some of Microsoft's rivals have belatedly woken up to this idea and launched the Liberty Alliance project to develop an open standard sign-on system. This is a very good thing. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand the difference between identification (which is generally not necessary) and authentication (which is). You can use Passport for authentication without telling it your real identity.
Back up
In Windows 95, I backed up my data using the Microsoft Backup program. Now I have a new PC with Windows Me installed, I have not been able to find a way to get this data on to my new machine. Am I missing something?
Gerry Tierney
JS: Yes, you are missing the Microsoft Backup program which, unlike PC Health, is "not a core component of Windows Millennium Edition". However, it is still available on the Me CD. See support.microsoft.com or search for Q264541 on Google.
Backchat
· Windows 95 users don't have access to the msconfig program that helps control which programs are loaded at start-up (January 31). However, Graham Jump from Consolve Consulting confirms that a copy taken from Windows 98 (C:\Windows\System\msconfig.exe) works fine. Alternatively, you can download a copy from www.tech.advice.com. Andrew White from Exeter also suggests an alternative $20 shareware program, GigaBest's Windows Startup Manager 2.0.
· Last week, I mentioned that you could see the full text and headers of an email in Outlook Express by right-clicking on a message, selecting Properties, clicking the Details tab, and then the button marked Message Source.
As Hugh Baker and others suspected, if the Preview Pane is turned off, this is one way of examining messages without opening them. And if the Preview Pane is turned on, Steve Mayer points out that you can do it quicker by pressing Ctrl-F3.
