Hi,

Both my mother and my wife's parents have recently switched their services to Sympatico DSL. Previously I had been able to connect to their computers remotely using RemotelyAnywhere to help them when they had computer issues. Since the switches in service, I have not been able to connect to their computers. The Speedstream 4200 modems are not supposed to block any ports and there have not been any changes to the computer settings. Can't quite figure it out.

avchambers

What kind of error messages - if any - are you getting?

Just the standard "Page cannot be displayed" message.

Have you tried any other VNC type programs to see if you can get a connection? Winvnc is free. Did you try msn remote desktop? I would try another program to make sure you can at least get a connection.

Have tried MSN Messenger with no success, but I may not have configured or installed that properly. I haven't tried VNC yet but will.

Between Sympatico, my firewall, my router and the firewall at work I could never get a remote service to work.

I use the free service of logmein.com, works like a charm!

Well, I've got VNC on all three of my machines at home, behind my D-Link router/firewall, on Sympatico . . . . and through my firewall at work, to my sympatico connection at home and . . . . it does work, so . . . Sympatico isn't doing any blocking there.

Did you apply any windows updates to the machine? Maybe Windows XP Service Pack 2? Just wondering if the windows firewall was reactivated, or reset to default, and is blocking. As well, some anti-virus programs come with built in firewalls as well . . . could be that an update to that went off in the background and turned on the firewall, or reset some rules to default.

Can you ping the remote machine?

Can't ping the address. Turned off the Windows firewall completely. The firewall on the SMC router is turned off, the ports are continuing to forward as before in the router configuration.

Well, if you can't ping it, one of twho things is the case.

Either you're going to the wrong IP address, or else there's still a firewall blocking somewhere. Sympatico doesn't block ping responses, so, it's not them.

It's got to be one of the other two.

Try taking the router out of the picture completely for testing. Just plug the DSL modem straight to one of the computers, then try pinging it, or seeing if you can connect.

Well it's just started working today, without any known changes (at least that I know of). I think I'll take up knitting.

........ I think I'll take up knitting.

:rolleyes: lmao...bless ya., aren't we all in that predicament at one point or another....or just constantly :D

Still have my mother's computer that doesn't connect. She doesn't have a router, her computer's connected directly to the DSL modem. I've tried turning off the windows firewall and I still can't even ping the host.