Windows Easy Connect - seems to be missing
 

Hi,

I'm having trouble giving my dad 'remote assistance' using Windows Easy Connect. It's not something I've used before, and it seems to be available and ready to go at my end (I'm running Win 8.1, 64 bit). However, at his end - he's running Win 7 Home 64 bit - the "Launch remote assistance" option seems to be missing from the System section in Control Panel.

According to sources on the internet, Win 7 has Easy Connect as an option.

Does anyone know why it seems to be missing?

It's a bit of a pain as he's in Sussex and I'm in Oxfordshire, so it's not a quick journey to have a look at his PC...he's just got a Win 7 PC (his previous one was a very elderly XP machine), so at the moment he needs a bit of support, and he's not particularly computer literate, so it's very tricky to picture what he's trying to explain sometimes. Those of you who provide remote support over the phone will recognise this scenario!

Thanks in advance, and hope.

EDIT: have discovered since first posting that the Remote Assistance .exe file is in C: \Windows\System32, named 'msra.exe'. I'll check to see if this is present on my dad's PC next time I phone him. Might get him to make a shortcut or pin it to his taskbar. Ideally I'd like to do this for him myself, remotely, but....

This page seems to have the info required: Remote Assistance - Use in Windows - Windows 7 Help Forums

Personally I've always used TeamViewer and find it very simple to use, even for my dear ol' Dad who sounds just like yours :) All he has to do start it up and provide you with the ID and password displayed.

Free TeamViewer Download for Windows

If you're going to use TeamViewer, I recommend the "quick support" version - no installation required, and when it starts up it goes straight to displaying the figures for connection.
Regular Teamviewer is a bit more of a pain in the ass - one has to install it and then tell it what you want to do.

Thanks for the replies! I'll have a look at TeamViewer, again not something I've heard of before. I'm sure once I've got something working my dear old dad will be fine using it.

Spent an hour and ten minutes on the phone last night "resolving issues" and explaining things. Good job I'm a calm sort of individual....