Workaround for PCAnywhere Bug with Vista

I’ve seen no LiveUpdate or documentation on this bug, but apparently it’s affecting other PCAnywhere Vista users as well. Rather than wait for Symantec to come up with a fix, I figured out that the rendering engine, Winawe32.exe is causing the problem.

Right-click on your taskbar and select Task Manager.
Select the Processes tab.
Highlight Winawe32.exe and click End Process.
When warned, click Okay.
Close PCAnywhere.
Reopen PCAnywhere and you should see all of your Remotes now.

Would be nice if Symantec fixed this bug with PCAnywhere, it’s a real pain.

About Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in inbound marketing leveraging social media, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click and public relations. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies.

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Abhijit

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.
Vikrant

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
http://URIHuh? mab

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.
AnotherCoder

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.
mab

Great, versions earlier than 12.1 wouldn’t run on Vista, so I bought 12.1. I’ve found that there’s no patch for 12.1, in fact, I don’t think 12.1 is even supported anymore, despite it being on the market not that long ago, but you’re welcome to go out and pay for another version 12.5 now.
pew-pew

mab, you should be able to get 12.5 for free. Updates that don’t increase the major version number (the 12) are usually free. You’ll probably have to contact their support though, it’s a pain but I upgraded 12.0 to 12.1 in this way.

http://www.whytec.com Trevor

Even 12.5 is flakey. I have to down grade the remotes garphic modes in order to start or reliably maintain a connection. Just waiting for some time and I'll be evaluating VNC as a replacement. PCA is now dead as far as I'm concerned. It seems Symantec are not supporting it and don't care.

If anyone knows of any Symantec PCA update, service pack, etc for 12.5 I'd sure like to know about it.

Regards
Trevor