Thoughts on AMMYY?

[Larry Sabo]

You could always upload the file to your website temporarily until the install is complete.

Tried that. MSFT (my host) doesn't accept executable uploads.

 

[Rayspcsolutions]

Tried that. MSFT (my host) doesn't accept executable uploads.

Larry, would zipping or even double zipping work to get by that restriction I wonder?

 

[Larry Sabo]

@Ray, I'm pretty sure it would, provided I password protect it; it just doesn't strike me as very professional. It's enough of a struggle to walk customers through firewall, anti-virus and anti-malware blockages to get the program to run.

 

[Rayspcsolutions]

@Larry Sabo That's a very good point.

 

[NJW]

MSFT (my host) doesn't accept executable uploads.

You could change to a proper hosting solution ...

Zipping executables has long been useless for (Hotmail et al) email attachments, so I can't see it being accepted for MSFT upload – it's trivial to unzip and inspect; passwords just lead to rejection.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I've thought about it (changing hosts) and am still thinking about it. The mental challenge of rebuilding my site in WordPress is not a welcome thought. I found the whole process of setting up MX records daunting, while I know it should have been simple.

 

[katz]

Is there any chance that AMMYY will address these issues? Does their development team not update the program at all?

 

[Larry Sabo]

They do update the program from time to time; last one was to V3.5 on 3-Jul-2014 They also respond to support e-mails from paid users quickly enough, but I have never asked what can be done about the blockages. They do suggest the following:

The digital signature of Ammyy Group will be removed after updating of Ammyy_Admin.exe. We allow and recommend you to resign of updated Ammyy_Admin.exe by your digital signature (you can use signcode.exe tool)

However, to re-sign the customized executable I need a Certificate and they are not cheap. I notice that I can go to their website and download the free version of Ammyy, probably because it is signed. <sigh>

 

[Instant Housecall - Corey]

Code signing will help, but it's only part. You need to reach out to AV companies to get whitelisting done and firewall vendors for the servers (assuming valid SSL). Even then, without critical mass, you'll get 'uncommonly downloaded' messages from some browsers and AVs.

 

[Larry Sabo]

That's one thing I like about IH, clients never have a problem downloading and running the client-side executable. I just wish it was as fast as Ammyy (and the price as CAD, given the exchange rate).

 

[NJW]

I've thought about it (changing hosts) and am still thinking about it. The mental challenge of rebuilding my site in WordPress is not a welcome thought. I found the whole process of setting up MX records daunting, while I know it should have been simple.

(Somewhat OT) You don't need Wordpress for your site. Have a tinker with GetSimple or one of the other flat-file CMSs. You can set everything up locally and transfer it to public hosting later.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Thanks, Nick. I'll look into that.

 

[ell]

I'm trialling InstantHousecall but still prefer Ammyy, because it's so much faster and I guess because I'm more used to it. It just works great for me. Any tech who uses the uncustomized Ammyy app is asking for trouble. It takes just seconds to customize the app with your own password and eliminate the risk of your customers being hacked/scammed. <sigh> The customizer is free to paid users.

Unfortunately, Dropbox is now blocking downloads of my customized app for reasons we're trying to work out, so installing it while on-site or using another remote app is required. Now, that sucks!

I love Ammyy too but I think we're losing the battle here, I only have it on a few clients, (installed on them before all the blocking hassles) I took it off my website now for clients to download. I'm trying out anydesk now, its very good and NO blocking issues so far.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Looks good! WOW! Is it ever fast!

 

[JustInTech]

Looks good! WOW! Is it ever fast!

Hi Larry,

Been a while, hope all is well.

On ammyy, may have already been mentioned but I had the exe on my site as a backup to screenconnect and google flagged it, I removed it and lodged a ticket via my webmaster account and google unflagged it.

Unfortunately the knock on affect was that I couldn't renew my ssl cert for 3 months with my cert provider as that's one of the checks they do.

So I don't use ammyy as my backup now

Cheers j

 

[Larry Sabo]

Hi Justin, good to hear from you again. Yeah, hosting it is more trouble than it's worth, for sure. However, I plan to still keep using it as my primary remote support tool, but will install it and make the A-V exceptions using AnyDesk (if it works as well as it did in my brief trial last night). Things didn't go as well the morning, as I couldn't connect to my main PC from this laptop using AnyDesk even though AnyDesk is running as a service on the mail PC. We'll see how it goes. The price is certainly right and the speed couldn't be faster.

Cheers, and best wishes for lots of DR jobs in the coming year!

Edit: I think the problem with unattended connecting this morning was I goofed entering the alias name when I tried to connect (used "_" instead of "-". It would be good if the product incorporated a contact list like Ammyy does. I think the more expensive versions do that.

 

[tucsonpc]

(Somewhat OT) You don't need Wordpress for your site. Have a tinker with GetSimple or one of the other flat-file CMSs. You can set everything up locally and transfer it to public hosting later.

While I'd love to know what options are available before jumping into signing up, TechSiteBuilder (https://techsitebuilder.com/) seems to be very popular on the podcasts I listen to. Probably the wrong thread to ask, but if anyone has tried it/is currently using it, I'd love to see the results.

 

[Vyper28]

I liked IHC and I was very close to buying it again recently. However I had some issues with people who've used it in the past. I tried to remote in to a client using my installer for IHC, but this client had previously used IHC with another provider. For some reason, even after full uninstall and reinstall using my installer, it constantly tries to connect to the ex provider instead of ours. I'm seriously considering teamviewer or screenconnect at this stage!

 

[ZenTree]

I liked IHC and I was very close to buying it again recently. However I had some issues with people who've used it in the past. I tried to remote in to a client using my installer for IHC, but this client had previously used IHC with another provider. For some reason, even after full uninstall and reinstall using my installer, it constantly tries to connect to the ex provider instead of ours. I'm seriously considering teamviewer or screenconnect at this stage!

Have you tried using something like revo to remove traces?

I would strongly recommend SC though, it just works.

 

[Instant Housecall - Corey]

I liked IHC and I was very close to buying it again recently. However I had some issues with people who've used it in the past. I tried to remote in to a client using my installer for IHC, but this client had previously used IHC with another provider. For some reason, even after full uninstall and reinstall using my installer, it constantly tries to connect to the ex provider instead of ours. I'm seriously considering teamviewer or screenconnect at this stage!

@Vyper28, that's the expected behaviour.

- Change the assigned Specialist by clicking Options.
- Type your Specialist ID in the field provided.

If that behaviour is problematic for you, I'd like to understand why. Reach out to me at corey@instanthousecall.com