How to use RealVNC free edition in Vista

어제 해 보고 잊어버릴까봐 적어둔 건데... 결국 오늘 그냥 Enterprise버젼 사기로 하고 말았다.
암튼 필요한 사람 있을까 봐서 여기다 올려둔다.

While I set up a new workstation on Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit recently,

I found the free edition of RealVNC does not work properly in Service-mode.

A background knowledge can be found from

Workaround to Run VNC Server in Windows Vista .

A simple solution is to buy Personal or Enterprise edition of VNC.

Then, we can use VNC on Vista as we did on XP.

One copy of Enterprise edition costs ~$50. (http://realvnc.com/products/download.html).

Not bad at all!

If you want to save $50, a workaround is to run free edition of VNC server IN USER MODE.

This should work fine if someone can log in the machine before VNC connection.

BUT, a serious drawback is that VNC server runs only after someone log in.

So, for example, if the machine is automatically rebooted by Windows Update in nights,

the vnc server will not run automatically because nobody logs in.

In this case, nobody can connect to the machine through VNC connection.

Anyway... For those who are interested in this cheap solution,

here I summarize how to make Free edition of RealVNC Server work

on Windows Vista using User-mode.

I verified this works with RealVNC 4.2.6 and Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

(I guess this should work for other versions of Vista.)

1. When installing RealVNC, in the "Select Additional Tasks" windows

   make it sure to uncheck "Register and configure VNC Server for Service-Mode"

   and "Start the VNC Server in Service-Mode".

2. Go to Control Panel > Windows Firewall > Allow a program through Windows Firewall > Exceptions.

   Make it sure "VNC Server ..." is checked.

3. Run VNC Server. This can be done by clicking 

    "Start > All Programs > RealVNC > VNC Server 4 (User Mode) > Run VNC Server".

    Then, a "Windows Defender Warning" popup will say 

    "Review harmful or potentially unwanted software. blah~~".

    Click "Review" and then click "Review iterms detected by real-time protection".

    Choose "Always Allowed" for the "Action" column and click "Apply Actions".

4. As RealVNC is not in service mode, it does not start automatically at boot-up.

    But, it'd be good if VNC server is automatically up, at least, when a user log in. To do this,

    copy "RealVNC > VNC Server 4 (User Mode) > Run VNC Server" icon

    to the Startup folder of all users.

    On my machine, the folder is "c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup".

5. (Inserted at 11:44pm Oct. 18. 2007 PST)
   If VNC viewer on your client machine is a free edition, it might be unable to connect the Vista VNC server.
   Go to www.realvnc.com and download a personal or enterprise version of VNC viewer.
   Unlike VNC server, all editions of VNC viewer are free.