remote-support

Category: How to Guides

How to logon to work with remote desktop and access files on your "local" hard drive.

Consider this scenario;
Your working remotely and you have a bunch of images or other data on your local PC (i.e. the one you are sitting in front of). You need to move them to your organizations server so you can access them remotely, share them with work colleagues and ensure that they are stored correctly on the organizations server (so they can be backed up and managed by the IT department).

Here are some options:

  1. If you can, email them to "yourself" at your work email and then download them on the remote server do that
  2. Your work may have a web portal like sharepoint, onedrive professional, Dropbox (or the domestic versions of the same) that might be a good option. It's a few more steps and you end up with multiple copies of the same files all round the internet, server and you local PC but it may be a good option, especially for large files.
  3. Depending on the server and how its been setup you may be able to just minimize your connection, copy the files on the local PC, restore the connection back to full screen and then paste the files to the server
  4. Another option is to use the functionality in your Microsoft remote desktop connection to transfer them direct from the hard drive of your PC to the remote server following is the brief instruction on how to do that.

Option 4 above has a couple of considerations that are worth mentioning;

  • Your remote desktop connection has been setup for "thin client" in that only the screen, keyboard and mouse travel over the link. You may find that if you do a big file transfer it will slow down the connection that your using and possibly impact other users as well depending on the connection speed at the work side.
  • Your IT department may have blocked you from doing this for security reasons.

Lastly, before the guide, I just wanted to mention that even if you can do this, consideration should be given to if you should do this. Using the "thin" connection for video, keyboard and mouse your unlikely to transfer a virus from your PC to the office network, once you are transferring "fat" files this increases the chance of a problem also consider IP (intellectual property) protection before you tell your staff how to open an untraceable gateway from their home PC to the organizations server.

The guide to setting up access to your "local" disks.

Right click on your desktop icon (assuming you have one) and chose "edit" [See image below]

RemoteFiles01

Click on the "show Options" button [See image below]

RemoteFiles02

Click on the "local resources" tab and then the "more" button.

Once the "more" box pops up check the option for "drives [See image below]

Click OK when finished

RemoteFiles03

Go back to the general tab and click Save [See image below]

RemoteFilesA

That's it your done.

Close the remote connection and then double click in the usual way to connect

When you logon now you may receive an additional warning, connect anyway [See image below]

RemoteFiles04

Once you are connected you should see all the hard drives from your local computer and should be able to copy and paste between your local computer and the remote one (work). [See image below]

RemoteFiles05

Finally you might have to dig around a bit to find your local files. The default location will be under C:\Users\YourUserName\ then under documents, pictures, desktop etc.

Just remember not to try to copy too much, 20 full sided image should be OK, 2,000 not so much.

[End]

This information has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.
Category: How to Guides

How to install your self signed certificate on your PC so that your PC will trust your server:

NOTE: Only install certificates from a source that you trust, e.g. your IT support staff

1. Save the certificate on your desktop or convenient location, Double click on the certificate
2. Click on "install certificate"

Continue below...

01

3. Select current user (if you are an admin on the PC then you can select "local machine")
4 Click next

02

5. Select "place all certificates in the following store"
6. Click browse

03

7. Chose the "trusted root certification authority" folder
8 Click OK

04

9, Click finsh

05

10. Click Yes to install your certificate. NOTE: Only install certificates from a source that you trust, e.g. your IT support staff

06

 

[End]

Category: How to Guides

To install Microsoft Office 365 follow the steps below, note that if you have installed another version of office (such as the 64bit version) you will need to uninstall that first.

  • To uninstall, go to the windows control panel (continued after image...)

InstallOffice 02

Select MS office and click uninstall (see image below) continued after image...

InstallOffice 01

When finished RESTART YOUR PC before you go any further.

To install office 365:

Logon to the PC with an account that has administrative privileges

  • Go to your office 365 portal (https://www.office.com)
  • Logon to your account
  • Click on the install office drop-down (see 1 below)
  • Click on the "other install options" selection from the drop-down (see 2 below)

Continued after the image

1

  • Don't click on the install office button as that will give you the 64 bit office install by default.
  • Click on Apps and devices (see 3 below)

Continued after the image

2

  • Click on the version drop-down and chose 32 Bit (see 4 below), I recommend you use 32 bit office regardless of the version of Windows you have. 32bit office provides for better compatibility

Follow the prompts to install

3

[End]

This blog post has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers. Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

 

Category: How to Guides

Following is a simplified version of the Macrium Reflect backup image restore process. Note this sort of software and process is for more advanced users. Normally, restoring a backup to the existing PC where the backup image was taken and the recovery disk was made won't present any challenges. However, restoring an image to another PC can be challenging. Depending on your PC or laptop there may be endless combinations of potential gotchas which will result in not being able to see the internal hard drive in the PC or laptop and as such being unable to restore the image to new hardware.

If you boot (startup) from the USB boot-disk and you are unable to see the internal PC hard disk you could try the following:

  • Changing the disk mode from RAID to 'standard' Link

WARNING:
USE EXTREME CAUTION that you don't restore an image over all your data this is an advanced procedure that ERASES the entire contents of your PC.

Following are the main steps:

STEP ONE:

Backup the entire PC if you are in any doubt that there may be files that you need to recover.

STEP TWO:

Boot from the Macrium recovery disk, normally this will require tapping DEL, F10, or F12 during the boot process depending on your PC then selecting the USB or CD recovery disk. (Note Windows 8 era PC hardware may not have the option to intrurpt the process by pressing a key)

Notes regarding UEFI or legacy disk mode (sorry this is an advanced topic I will try to make it as simple as possible)

Your PC will be set to run the hard disks in UEFI or legacy mode:

  • Older PCs may only have legacy (in which case there is only one option)
  • Newer PCs may only have UEFI (in which case there is only one option)
  • Most PC's at the time of writing will have either option

Your PC may be set to using either UEFI or legacy disk mode. Typically this can be changed in the BIOS setup normally accessed by F2 at PC Boot/startup. Your restored image should be suitable for that disk mode, if its not the backup can still be restored but it requires extra more complex steps, see here for that.

Additionally, if the PC is set to  UEFI disk mode and boot from USB you may get the option to boot from [the same] USB drive in either UEFI or legacy mode, depending on how things are setup you may not see the disk drive to be able to backup or restore to if you chose the wrong mode.

[continued below]

UEFI Legacy Boot Anat

I'm simple terms everything needs to match

  • If your PC is set to UEFI disk mode, boot from the USB in UEFI disk mode and restore a UEFI image
  • If your PC is set to Legacy disk mode, boot from the USB in Legacy disk mode restore a Legacy image

(remember you *can* restore an image from Legacy to UEFI or vice versa if need be see here for that)

STEP 3 - The Restore

Once you have successfully booted from the Macrium boot disk follow the instructions below...

"press any key when prompted"

MacriumRestore01

Allow the Macrium recovery environment to start

MacriumRestore06

Click on the restore tab (1 below), then browse for an image file (2 below)

MacriumRestore05

 Select your recovery image from its stored location, normally on another USB drive which you will find under "Devices with removable storage" (see 1 below), In this case its is on a second hard drive in the PC (see 2 below). Note that drive letters will probably be different than in Windows

Click on OK (see 3 below)

MacriumRestore04

Once the backup is selected click restore image (see 1 below).

MacriumRestore03

You may have to chose the drive to restore "to" (especially in the case of restoring to a different PC), make sure you chose the correct hard drive. Its useful to understand we are restoring the entire hard drive from with the backup image and restoring it over the entire main "boot" hard drive in the PC (for this simple application). Restoring only certain partitions is beyond the scope of this simple guide.

Ensure that the checkbox "copy selected partitions when I click next" is checked

Click next

MacriumRestore02

The entire hard drive will be erased and the image will be restored.

When complete, remove all the USB drives and restart the PC, Windows should start and if this is a different PC it should locate the specific drivers for the new PC. The PC may restart several times during this process.

Tip:

Macrium doesn't always seam to auto scale all the partitions to fit on the drive in the instance that you get an error about not enough space before the actual restore starts you may uncheck certain partition iof not required, in the instance below I could uncheck the Last pation (see 1 below) as this is not required.

MacriumRestore07

 This information has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

[End]

 

 

Category: How to Guides

Follow the steps below to create a "rule" in MS Outlook to auto-move an email to another folder when received. Note that this is a "server side rule" so it will run regardless if your Outlook is open or not, this means that when you are out and about and checking email on your phone you will still get the benefit of this functionality.

This is for the Microsoft outlook program/application using office 365 or exchange server as the back-end mail service.

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