Network messages and Remote shutdown.

Priapus

Priapus

Priapus

Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2004
Posts
10,569
Location
East Sussex, UK
Howzit all,

At my house I have 4 computers connected to a LAN. Three PC's and one laptop all linked up to each other. Now I was playing with a few things last night and found a way to send messages to each computer or to a certain computer using the command promt, using "Net Send Computer's name message"

Thus was actually quite fun, which lead me to thinking, is there a app I can download which is like MSN or similer which I can chat to people in the house on a chat program like MSN, but just through the LAN not an Internet connection?

The second thing is; how can I remotely shut down a certain pc on the network from my pc? I tried a shortcut on my desktop using 'shutdown.exe -i' but that didn't work too well. :(.
Also is there a way to restart or log off a machine off the network?

Is there another way I can do this, if so, how?

Any help would be great! :D

Thanks guys.
 
Last edited:
If your using windows xp just use Remote Desktop Connection and connect to the computer you want to shut down and do it that way.
 
Hi,

Yes, I'm using Windows Xp Pro. So can I do it like that? Do I need and special accses on the pc I want to shut down?
 
the user account on the machine you are trying to connect to must have a password otherwise you won't be able to log on.
 
yeah sorry forgot that, all mine have so kinda assumed.....You would have been scratching you head for a while:D
 
Ice On Fire said:
I was playing with a few things last night and found a way to send messages to each computer or to a certain computer using the command promt, using "Net Send Computer's name message"
.
Click to expand...


Exactly how do u do this ? and is there anyway u can bring up the names of the computers on the network ?
 
For the chat thing, there are two ways I can think of:

Firstly you could look into setting up an IRC network on the LAN. I considered this myself once but having never used anything to do with IRC before thought it would be too difficult, due to lack of experience.

The second way would be the HTTP based way - aka using a web server and browsers. Basically, you set one pc up as a web server and run some chat software on it. Then, the other PCs go to http://(server's ip or hostname)/ in the web browser. I have used this second technique quiete effectively myself. Specifics for software: I used X7 chat for the chat software (http://www.x7chat.com/), Apache 2 for the webserver (http://www.apache.org/), and of course I installed PHP and MySQL (http://www.php.net/, http://www.mysql.com/) which are required by X7 chat. Fortunately, if you don't feel up to all this there is a much easier way, using XAMPP - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html. Choosing this option, you only have to install XAMPP and then add X7 to it.

Now, your second question; remote shutdown. I had the same curiosity when I first got my network working, and found a brilliant program, called Power Off http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/poweroff/poweroff.htm. There's not a lot more to say on that one, but it really is worth trying. Also supports WOL packets if you know what they are, which can be quite fun :D

edit - btw, just to make sure it's obvious enough - you must be running power off on the remote computer as well, else it simply won't work. The easiest and neatest way I find for doing this is to copy the power off exe to any folder you like - (I choose the Windows folder), run the program, and click install as service. This way it always runs, even after restarting when no users have logged on yet.

Hope this helps, null :)
 
Last edited:
A lot of help there, null.

Thanks man, appericate it and will give it all ago, could be a lot of fun! :D

Will that software work on XP Home or is it only the Pro versions?
 
null said:
edit - btw, just to make sure it's obvious enough - you must be running power off on the remote computer as well, else it simply won't work. The easiest and neatest way I find for doing this is to copy the power off exe to any folder you like - (I choose the Windows folder), run the program, and click install as service. This way it always runs, even after restarting when no users have logged on yet.

Hope this helps, null :)
Click to expand...

On this bit, do you mean I can send the .exe file to the remote computer over my network, then install it from my pc to their pc over the network?
 
Should all work fine on XP Home :)

Regarding Power Off Installation;

No I don't :p. I'll try and explain again. Power Off can be run for two purposes; 1) To listen for a command from another computer, and then do said command (e.g. shutdown).
2) To send a command to another computer - e.g. telling it to shutdown. You run it in this way on the computer that you want to send the commands from.

However, to be able to send commands to another computer, that computer must have course be expecting a command first, and so all computers you want to control should be running it as described in 1).

To install it like with 1), copy the file (poweroff.exe I think) to the C:\WINDOWS folder (or any other folder if you really want to). To do this you can do whatever - Windows File Sharing/Flash Drive/Floppy Disk/Copy and Paste via Remote Desktop. You get the idea :p. Once it's copied, run it and click Service>Create service. Then look for the check box for 'Allow remote control' and make sure it's checked. Click on settings and set up a password, then click Service>Save settings to service. Then you're done.

To control the remote pcs, run poweroff.exe on the pc you want to control them from (from any directory, doesn't matter). The rest should be obvious enough, but of course you will need to tell it you want to control a remote computer, specify which, and tell it the password.

edit - If I remember rightly, you can close the GUI on remote PCs once you have installed the service, and it should carry on listening for commands.

Hope this helps, null :)
 
Trillian features a LAN based chat system known as 'Rendevous' or something similar.. it's part of the Trillian package (MSN, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo).
 
Net send is turned off on most pc's now because you can get spam popups through it.

Also, unless there is a setting you can change, i dont think you can turn off/restart a computer using Start>Shutdown whilst using Remote desktop connection on XP. At least i cerntainly dont have that option, and i use it daily to look after my media pc.

So you will have to right click on the remote computer taskbar, click Task Manager, and shut down/restart using the Windows menu at the top.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom