Control Windows desktops via VNC from ARD?

What Flavor Windoze?

Let me make sure I am understanding what you are looking to accomplish.

You want to connect to a Windoze Box from your Mac via an ARD type connection?

If this is correct have you tried using RDC for Windoze?

If so what was it lacking that you didn't like?

-Ryan

I have not, my network is small enough that I just use RDC to hook up to them one at a time. I hear that real VNC is suppose to work... I have never set it up though. Might check their site. If I find anything I will share it with you. Good luck!
-Ryan

We are trying to do this as well. According to the ARD site it should be able to view VNC clients, but we cannot get it to work. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

I have the same question. Apple Remote Desktop uses VNC protocol, so I think we should be able to
use it to access a windows machine running real VNC server. But how exactly can ARD be used used over ssh (port 22). Should be possible. Timbuktu has this feature built in. Without this, the only way to secure
these communications would be to set up a VPN with pre-shared keys on
every computer that uses ARD. While this is possible, it would take
substantial unnecessary work.

I'm able to use ARD 2.2 to control Windows boxes running RealVNC. When adding the Windows box to the Master List, I leave the username field blank, and enter the VNC password in the password field. Authentication fails, so I click "Add Anyway" (or you can uncheck "Verify name and password before adding"). I'm then able to remotely connect and control with no problems. The blue ARD monitor icon is even replaced with a black VNC icon to distinguish the PCs in the list from the Macs.

Yea, got mine working! (The following applies to RealVNC 4.1.1 running in Service-Mode on a Windows 2000 box)

Things to try:

Turn off authentication on the client until full functionality is established.

Test connectivity via HTTP
--------------------------
Open up a web browser and see if the Java viewer works.
Also try to telnet to either port: telnet <client IP address> 5800 (or 5900)

Access Control
--------------
Check in the Connections tab if there are IP address entries in the Access Control and whether "Only accept connections from the local machine" is checked. For the former, even if the ARD workstation and VNC client are on the same subnet putting an entry in for that subnet may force the issue. Also matching the subnet mask is important.
So,
ARD station - 192.168.1.3 (subnet mask: 255.255.255.0)
VNC client - 192.168.1.100 (subnet mask: 255.255.255.0)

The entry would be: +192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0

Switching is not an option 🙂
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As seen in the thread entitled: "'Not authorized to control this computer' message", switching between Observe and Control modes is not an option, but one can go into one or the other directly.

I am typing this message through ARD 2.2 and Real VNC.

Here are the issues:

1) Make sure that you open the appropriate ports on your firewalls. VNC uses TCP port 59xx where 'xx' is the display number. For most windows machines this is '00'. So make sure that port 5900 is open on all firewalls between the two machines. This port is closed by default in XP and on the Mac. Make sure that both side are using the same port, since VNC can use any TCP port. [WARNING: use ssh over the Internet!]

2) Run 'RealVNC' as a service on the Windows machine. I use the free version with full satisfaction.

3) Apple claims that you can send Ctrl-Alt-Del in order to log on to the windows machine using Control-Option-Forward Delete. Never seen it work in ARD on any machine or version. There are two solutions we use on our network: 1) Use "Chicken of the VNC" to send the Ctrl-Alt-Del from the Mac then use ARD, and 2) set the PC up to autologin. [WARNING: this is a security risk since unlike the Mac, Windows keeps autologin passwords in the clear in the registry. Worms and Virii have easy access to most items in the Windows Registry.]

http://www.realvnc.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

We are trying to control remote Windows Clients (W2K) from our ARD 2.2.

We are able to 'view' the remote Windows machines within ARD but cannot take over keyboard and mouse.

The Windows clients are running RealVNC as a server service. ARD connects to the Windows clients by providing the correct VNC passwort configured on the RealVNC server.

We did a testing by using 'Chicken on the VNC' as a viewer on the MAC side and could control the remote Windows workstation (provided by RealVNC) without a problem. Meaning keyboard as well as mouse handling.

This leads us to the question, what we do wrong on the ARD side, that only shows up with the remote display, but no mouse and keyboard.

The ARD error message states: 'You are not authorized to control this computer'

Any Ideas what we could have missed here? Thks for advice!

Figured it out.

If we first 'observe' the remote VNC Server from within ARD we are not allowed to switch to 'control'. If we directly choose to 'control' it ARD gives us full access.

Performance is extremly bad. Chicken of the VNC gives us access to the remote client within a second, ARD instead lets us wait for 20 and screen refreshing is poor as well !!!

Any ideas how to improve this performance?

I was able to get ARD to access a VNC server running VNC Viewer for Win32 4.0 simply by adding a password on the VNC server. Having done so, and having configured ARD with the password for the server, ARD opened the VNC machine without delay. None of the otther tricks (subnet, IP range, etc) were necessary.

For the Ctrl-Alt-Del issue: Try typing Ctrl-Command-Del while controlling the VNC server. Works like a champ for me.

Can someone help please. I have vnc running on windows 2003 and I'm trying to access this from ARD. I have checked all the appropriate ports and they are open. I can even get the java version working via the browser. But I can't get ARd to work. I have switched off all the authentication on the windows server all to no avail.