Today I searched for a version of ChrisControl that would work with Windows 7. I had been using this at work with XP and it is awesome for doing LAN remote control support. It allows for connection to a windows machine via RDP or VNC. VNC is automatically installed on the target machine and connects without a password. This is all assuming you have access to the administrative share of the target machine. It also automatically uninstalls VNC after the support session has ended. There is no need to have someone at the other end of the connection initiate it or accept it.

I was really bummed when I found out my version of ChrisControl did not work with Windows 7. I found out that have a new beta version that has worked great so far. If you do support, I strongly recommend this program. The beta version can be downloaded here.

Today I searched how to diagnose an internet connectivity issue to a specific web site. It was about 1am and I got awakened by a call from our office in India. They were having problems connecting to our web based system. They said they could get to any other site but ours. I checked our site from my computer at home and found everything working properly. It was one of the hops in between causing a connectivity issue.

I started to google and found this pretty cool trace tool VisualRoute 2010 Lite Edition. The lite edition is free and allows you to run a trace route back to any domain on the net. It will show you the number of hops and response time. It also was able to tell me what network the bad hop resided in and its ip address. The pay additions look like they are much for feature rich but this was a nice graphical free tool I was able to use to quickly diagnose the problem.