spherebox

Want to control your hall’s PC while you’re physically in your room, but too lazy to walk over there? You wish there’s a “remote control” for you to initiate a torrent download in your hall’s PC, from your room’s PC? The answer will be “Virtual Network Computing” aka VNC

Here’s a dummy tutorial to show you how to configure VNC under a LAN environment. We’ll call the PC you wish to be remote controlled as “PC A” and the “remote controller” as “PC B”

1. Download TightVNC (TightVNC is used in this example, but there are other choices like UltraVNC and RealVNC as well)
2. Install it in both PCs (straight-forward “next-till-the-end” installation)
3. In PC A, open “Launch TightVNC Server” (under TightVNC group in Start Menu). If there’s any Firewall alert, just unblock it. Some antivirus software may detect it as virus, if that’s the case, just ignore it.
4. Then configure a password for it.

   

5. You need to know the IP address/host name of PC A. If you’re not already know, please execute “cmd” under Start->Run and type ipconfig. For the screenshot below, the IP address is 192.168.1.4

   

6. Go to PC B, open “VNC Viewer” (Fast or best compression) under TightVNC group in Start Menu. Enter the IP address and click “OK”.

   

7. You’ll be prompted for password. Just enter the password you set in PC A just now and here it goes – you’re controlling PC A from PC B!

   

Instead of controlling the PC under a LAN environment, you can also control your home PC from office by using VNC too, using the Internet. In that case you may need to explore Portforwarding and dyndns/no-ip. There are more settings from the server side that you can play around, all you need is just the time to try it.