If you want to take over his machine remotely for fault fixing try WinVNC from here <a href="http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/" target="_blank">WinVNC Web Page</a> It makes it much quicker if any screen wallpaper is removed before (or during) the connection.
A commercial application which does the same thing is SecureUp's Filespread RSA from <a href="http://www.secureup.com/filespread/" target="_blank">SecureUp</a>
Haven't tried Filespread but WinVNC is very helpful when trying to show/tell a newbie what to do on his new toy! What would be perfect would be a voice connection over the net at the same time but I don't think modem access would be able to handle that.
MAx