Noobie question

[John Aldrich]

On Monday 14 August 2006 01:09 am, jimmy gass wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> I must be dealing with a more advanced problem. I'm not able to connect.
> Is there something that I am not considering here? I'm using XP pro, the
> other machine is XP home. I'm connecting through a router through a
> cable modem. The machine on the other end is through a cable modem.
> Simply typing IP:5900 or IP:0 times out. I've tried connecting to the
> machine through putty, with my limited knowledge of that. Can't do that
> either. Do I need to somehow force that port to be open, or should VNC
> just see my connection coming in?
>
> Thanks for any help on this.
>
Jimmy:
If these are both XP Service Pack 2, the problem is likely 2-fold:
1) If your folks have a router at home, you need to open the ports in the 
router.
2) You will need to open port 5900 on the Windows Firewall on your folks' 
computer and I recommend putting the VNC Server executable in the firewall as 
an allowed application. You *may* need to add the VNC Client executable on 
your PC's firewall as well.

As of XP Service Pack 2, the firewall defaults to "on" instead of "off." This 
makes it much more difficult for "noobies" to use VNC, but not impossible.