Issues with Unattended Access after Cold Boot

MSP360 Managed Products Connect (Managed)
1

Hi,
I’m finding some issues with Remote Assistant unattended mode after the host (PC being controlled) has just booted up. What happens in this case is that the host is sitting at the Windows screen waiting for a username to be clicked on for a local login. In this state Remote Access normally fails with the message “Can’t connect: looks like remote computer is offline of ID is incorrect”

This doesn’t always happen, maybe one in five or ten restarts it will connect and display the same screen. Occasionally it gives the error for a few minutes after the cold start, but after a few minutes more it will accept connections.

In most cases when this error occurs, it is impossible to connect to the host until someone has logged in locally, after which it works normally even if the local user logs out again.

The other issue occurs more rarely. In these cases you can’t connect even after a local user has logged in, and that remains the case until the local user has manually launched the Remote Assistant application.

Both local and remote PCs are running v2.2.0.47

Any ideas? I tried changing the service to delayed start, but that didn’t help. Host PC is Windows 7, I’m connecting from Windows 10.

2

I’ve done some more tests today and it appears as if there’s a delay after a cold start before the host can be connected. I’m not sure how long, or if it’s a consistent time. However after that delay it works normally.

3

[reply=“TONY SMITH;4430”] Hello Tony,

That is correct, a service marked as Automatic (Delayed Start) will start shortly after all other services designated as Automatic have been started. In my experience, this means that they are started 1-2 minutes after the computer boots. The setting is most useful in lessening the “mad rush” for resources when a machine boots. So simply saying it is normal behavior for a machine from a cold start, if I remember correctly you can tweak those timers, but I would definitely advise against doing that.

4

I should have mentioned that I reverted the Delayed Start change, and have been running the service just as normal Automatic, the same as created by the application. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to how long you have to wait before the host is able to accept incoming connections. However it does seem that it’s just a delay of a few minutes, not an absolute failure like I originally thought.