Will UltraVNC work for this?

[hickeyt]

I hope that you can help me with a problem that I am trying to solve. I was hoping to call you as I'm not sure if I can explain, but I'll try.

I have a dear 94 year old friend who recently moved into an assisted living facility in North Carolina (I live in Seattle). She was not able to bring her desktop PC with her due to space. However, she desperately misses Zoom and email.

So, I acquired a simple laptop running Win 11 and configured it for her (I am running Win 10 pro) on my desktop. Her laptop still belongs to me as it is on "permanent loan"

She is not computer savvy AT ALL so I had to make it very simple with large icons on a basic desktop. She has really taken to it and we can email and Zoom with her without too much problem.

I anticipated her needing technical support so I loaded it with TeamViewer and AnyDesk so that I could take over her screen and fix things for her. I tested it thoroughly on my network before I shipped it. So I had her set up to be the host and I would be the client.

Unfortunately, somewhere between here and there (maybe when it was being hooked up onto the nursing home network), something changed and I can no longer access her machine. There is not any technical support in the nursing home where she lives and the staff is either too busy or not interested in this.

She is not able to download or install any programs --- that is beyond her abilities, so I cannot send her anything to try.

What I am looking for is a web-based solution where I could just send her a link in an email which would let her connect to a web-based server and then I could sign on and remotely control her desktop. Most of the freeware solutions that I have found involve installing some software on the host which would not work in this case.

I know that many support sites can just email a user a link for them to click on in order to troubleshoot.

If I could do that then either I could 1) fix Teamviewer or AnyDesk on her laptop or 2) just use that as my way to access her laptop.

From your web site, UltraVNC looks like it may have the functionality that I am looking for. If so, can you help me figure out how to do a very basic connection?

If UltraVNC will not work, do you have any other ideas?

Thanks so much.

[lesdes]

UVNC is not going to be suitable for you in a nursing home. Setting it up requires access to port forwarding on the router - which the nursing home will not allow.

If both AnyDesk and TV have stopped working (or rather have never worked) its likely to be due to the nursing home network setup. Maybe they are blocking certain ports. That is more likely than something changing in the PC.

The only way you are going to solve this (assuming it can be done) is by having someone knowledgeable at both ends to sort it out.