The Marketing Technology Blog

Issue has been fixed in pcAnywhere 12.5. Now currently in beta at http://betanew.altiris.com/BetaProducts/PCAnywhere125Enterprise/tabid/148/Default.aspx

Here’s what is happening:
pcAnywhere manager (winaw32.exe) launches SessionController.exe. If winaw32.exe times out before sessioncontroller.exe has loaded, then it results into blank screen. This could happen if the system is busy at the time pcaw32.exe is launching.

If this is happening consistently, then try launching SessionController.exe first, wait a few seconds and then launch pcAnywhere manager. This should work.

Hi

This issue has been fixed in pcAnywhere version 12.5 beta release.You can try this scenario even if your system is busy.

Thanks
Vikrant Poman

So, the 12.1 that I paid for doesn’t work, and there’s no mention of a patch that’s available from symantec.com. Let me guess, the 12.5 version, is available, if you want to pay for the product all over again, and meanwhile, lose customers. PcAnywhere has, over the last several years, turned into a piece of junk, extremely sloppy programming and testing, the lack of ownership and responsibility is all too apparent for someone like me that has coded in 8 different languages and supports systems for a living.

Our company has used pcAnywhere for remote administration for nearly two decades now. The bugs in the recent versions (11.0 and higher) have been getting increasingly frustrating, and we have discovered that the Enterprise version of RealVNC does the same job, using less system resources, for less money per install… and doesn’t have the annoyance of only being able to host one session at a time.

To elaborate: Using the “Call Remote” feature of a pcAnywhere host ties up the client, in that the same Remote cannot have 2 Hosts “call” it at the same time. Being a network coder, this makes no sense to me. VNC does not have this issue, and seems to “just work”, even on machines that pcAnywhere won’t even install on.

The Enterprise version of RealVNC works on Vista with no issues, although the free version “host” can’t run as a service on Vista (listens just fine, but immediately resets the connection every time you connect). In addition, VNC is truly cross-platform and works “out of the box” on graphical Linux environments, whereas pcAnywhere hosts can only run Windows(tm).

Wow, this sounds like a plug. However, I’m not related to RealVNC in any way other than being a quite satisfied customer, after pcAnywhere’s foibles and quirks forced us to find another remote administration product. We still use pcAnywhere on our installed customer base, but we’re not purchasing any new licenses from them.