ARD keeps showing as not active

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ARD keeps showing as not active

I am going to begin by confessing that I am a newbie here, I am not an IT tech and that my questions may be rudimentary and frustrating to experienced users. I apologize in advance.

I set up a remote desktop connection with my father's computer in another state so that I could do his Quickbooks for his business. When initially set up, things worked fine. However, I switched to Mountain Lion and I have had a host of problems since.

1.) I installed chicken of the VNC to create my connection. I am running Remote Desktop Admin 3.6.1 on Mountain Lion. At first, my father's imac was running ARD 3.6 on Lion. While I was trying to fix this issue, I have since updated him to ARD 3.6.1 and updated his lion.

2.) Most days I will go into to my Remote Desktop Admin program and I will find that his computer states ARD not active and will not allow me manage, control or observe. It used to be, If I called him up and told him to restart his computer, it would then show up as available. However, the next day it would show as ARD not active again. After trying different things to resolve it, nothing has helped to keep it showing as available. Yesterday after he restarted his computer and I was able to remotely control his computer again, I installed the latest updates on his computer. This morning, it showed his computer available (Yeah!), but I could not screen share (boo!). I restarted his computer through remote desktop admin and then it came back up showing as ARD not active. Now I cannot access it again. (Ugh!)

- Things I have tried:

- Deleting his computer from the admin list, rescanning with network address and trying to set up again. (It will not verify his computer).

- I had my father go into his system preferences and uncheck remote management, and then recheck it. (did not resolve the issue)

- As stated above, I updated his ARD client to 3.6.1 and updates lion (I lost screen share and now I cannot control, or observe).

Please let me know what I am doing wrong or possible solutions to resolve this issue. Please understand, I am new to this, so you may have to talk down in simplified terms 🙂.

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 11:35 AM

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Answer 1

abstert

Level 1

10 points

Oct 2, 2012 11:07 AM in response to OULady

Quick question to help resolve your issue. Are you using Chicken of the VNC to login to your father's computer then running Apple Remote Desktop? How are you connecting to his computer, through a router or something?

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Answer 2

OULady Author

Level 1

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Oct 2, 2012 11:38 AM in response to abstert

Ok, so I am going to show my ignorance here, so please bear with me- I do learn quickly. I installed chicken VNC, but honestly have no idea what it was for, I just read online that it was the first step in creating the connection. I login only through remote desktop and since I set up the client router for port forwarding, I assume I am logging in through his router??? I will say that while on lion I never had this issue. However, I also updated the admin software to 3.6.1. So, I don't know if either of those correspond to the problem.

Thank you so much for your help!!

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Answer 3

abstert

Level 1

10 points

Oct 2, 2012 4:22 PM in response to OULady

Well, let me clear some things up for you. Chicken VNC does the samething Apple Remote Desktop does in that they both allow you to connect to a computer on a network and view the screen as if you were in front of the machine. The difference is the management and administration level ARD provides like sending a UNIX script or installation package to another mac.

The port forwarding on the router should point to the IP address of your father's computer and the port that should be open is 5900 on the router. You will need to set a reserved IP on the router for your father's computer. I think the problem you are facing is related to how long the computer retains the IP address.

Let me give you a quick run down on how it works. The router issues out an IP address using the DHCP service. This service has a time limit for how long a device can have an IP address for sometimes set to 3 days. Now the port forwarding basically forwards all requests for a specific port (5900) to a specific IP address. If the IP address is changing then it will not allow you to connect because you have to manually set the IP. To fix that, you can reserve an IP for a specific device that will have that address no matter what. Kind of like static IP address.

This has to all be done on the router. Then on your father's computer you need to go to System Preferecenes->Sharing->Remote Management and click it to be ON. Set the "Allow access for:" to all users and make sure that the button that says "Computer Settings..." has no information and no checkmarks turned on.

At this point, you can use Chicken or ARD, but I would suggest ARD.

By the way...what type of router do you have at your parent's house?

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