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pcAnywhere 10.5 Host & Remote

pcAnywhere 10.5 Host & Remote

List Price: $179.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Problems with XP
Review: After many days of trying I have finally had to give up the attempt to get this product working with our single machine running XP pro.

There have been two main issues:

Firstly there seems to be issues with the shipped product that requires a download from symantec to fix (blank screen after reboot).

Secondly (and terminally) when a disk check is carried out post install, the machine checks the disk and then hangs. Aborting the check also causes a hang. If you do get a successfull reboot by using Last Known Good then the disk increasingly incorrectly reports file & folder sizes.

No viruses seem to be present (boot sector or otherwise).

Installs via the recommedend Clean Boot method were tried.

Obviously this may be peculiar to the system we were using (we could not find any reference to this type of problem on the Symantec site or elsewhere):

Toshiba Satellite 1800, XP Pro (Retail Upgrade, clean install), NTFS volume, PCanywhere 10.5 from CD.

Pcanywhere seems to work fine in other cofigurations, on other machines that we have tried - win98, win 2k on Compaqs & Panasonics.

I have to agree with other reviews I have read that Symantec products are shipping less and less robust (we also have had problems with NIS 2002).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Degrading Quality
Review: As with many of Symantec products over the years, the quality factor seems to be degrading with each new release. pcAnywhere is certainly no exception. What was once a stellar product backed by quality support is now riddled with installation issues, product quality issues, lack of performance and hardly any support at all.

Installation on certain Windows 2000 and XP machines may render the operating system unbootable, in which case you must reinstall the operating system from scratch to get the system working again. Assuming you manage to successfully install the product, performance is naggingly slow on connections slower than a T1 line or internal 100Mbps Ethernet network. You'll likely go mad attempting to type text on a remote computer attached via DSL or cable modem.

The only notable exception is that pcAnywhere performs file transfers (particularly updates to existing files) at rather outstanding speed by using Symantec's SpeedSync technology. On the down side, we have found that the pcAnywhere host has a habit of hanging. The only way to unhang the host is to restart the pcAnywhere service on the remote box. If the remote host is not on the local domain, you may have to drive to the remote location to restart the pcAnywhere service.

Windows Terminal Services offers a much better alternative and is included with Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server. Windows Terminal Services is also available on Windows XP Professional under the name Remote Desktop Connection.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Saved my company a lot of $$$$
Review: Being a Systems Engineer for our network users, I love this product. It has made my life so much easier. Instead of walking the end users through some steps over the phone, I just log in and take care of the issue. Here's where the money savings comes in... I no longer have to send a computer in for software issues because someone couldn't follow the instructions and my company doesn't have to pay to fly me to the different sites. The only issue I have ever had is with 10.5 and XP. It always installs fine, but it leaves an item in the tool bar that you can't close (more annoying than anything else). I imagine vers. 11 will fix this. Over all I give this product a BIG thumbs up!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Install PCAnywhere 10.5 on Windows NT at your own risk.
Review: Good product if it would work. Installed on a Dell Inspiron 4000 running XP Pro. On the first re-boot the device driver (ATi2dvai) caused an infinite loop. After an hour of re-boots I was finally able to get in to safe mode and see the 5 other error messages (video compatability problems, AW_HOST.sys had to be disabled, WINAW32.exe no functioning.....) Ended up having to restore back to two weeks ago. This is a good product if you don't mind a slow connection and are NOT running XP. If you are running XP or plan to in the future wait for a new version to come out before buying pcAnywhere

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Caused an infinite loop on XP Pro.
Review: Good product if it would work. Installed on a Dell Inspiron 4000 running XP Pro. On the first re-boot the device driver (ATi2dvai) caused an infinite loop. After an hour of re-boots I was finally able to get in to safe mode and see the 5 other error messages (video compatability problems, AW_HOST.sys had to be disabled, WINAW32.exe no functioning.....) Ended up having to restore back to two weeks ago. This is a good product if you don't mind a slow connection and are NOT running XP. If you are running XP or plan to in the future wait for a new version to come out before buying pcAnywhere

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very decent product
Review: I bought this software for my home networking. I connect my windows 98 client to windows 2000 server and found no problem. Very stable and easy to use. I considered to buy windows xp to achieve the same thing. But since I will be charged for each licence, I try this alternatives and feel very satisfied. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very decent product
Review: I bought this software for my home networking. I connect my windows 98 client to windows 2000 server and found no problem. Very stable and easy to use. I considered to buy windows xp to achieve the same thing. But since I will be charged for each licence, I try this alternatives and feel very satisfied. Highly recommended.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: ok but slow
Review: I have been using PC Anywhere since version 9, versions 10 and 10.5 have given me no futher features or stablity. I find that connecting via a modem across the telephone lines that I can only get a connection speed of 28.8k even when using 56k modems. I also find that if you try to do too much at once, ie print and open up a document at the same time that you will lock up the host machine. Otherwise the programme is simple to set up and use. Most of the time it actually does work

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Install PCAnywhere 10.5 on Windows NT at your own risk.
Review: I recently got a new home computer with Windows XP on it. I had currently been using Windows 98 and had PCAnywhere 8.0 running on it as well as on my PC at work running with Windows NT 4.0. It ran perfectly for years, however the only version of PCAnywhere compatible with XP is 10.5.. So, I got this program and decided to load it at work as the documentation said it ran with NT. BIG MISTAKE!!!! Program installed fine, but when I went to reboot my machine at the end of the night it Blue Screened on the reboot. Then it continually rebooted and blue screened. Couldn't bypass it. Tried starting the machine in VGA mode. No good either. Blue screen. Went to Symantec site and there is a known bug with NT and 10.5 that can cause a Blue screen due to some video driver crud. Bottom line, their fix involved installing parallel version of NT on machine and doing all sorts of manual stuff with the Registry. Send my Machine off to company LAN department. Guess what. MACHINE IS TRASHED. Unrecoverable. The have to reimage the entire box. Everything on my machine is gone. Nice of Symantec to (NOT) warn me before I installed about potential problems with NT 4.0. If they had I would have kept my 8.0 on my work PC. Bottom line, I have been without a machine for a day, all my work is lost and I have nothing by disdain for this software. DO NOT install 10.5 on an NT machine if you value your PC. You have been warned.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Slow, slower, slowest!
Review: I've used PC Anywhere in all its iterations. As a professional software analyst, I used to require that all my clients purchase a copy.

But not anymore. My biggest beef is that even when both the host and remote connections are high speed Internet, this product responds too slowly. When using this product, I can click with my mouse, go to the bathroom, get a second cup of coffee and pet my dog before the command will take effect.

I much prefer using WebX or VPN as a tool of choice for remote support.

On the plus side, remote support after hours, while slow, is relatively painless.


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