Remote Start of DirecPC Navigator?

[BrianJ]

I'm looking for a way or a script that can remotely start DirecPC Navigator to connect to the internet from another machine in my home network.

My main box has the DirecPC NIC and a LAN card installed and I have ICS running fine on the network... which is located in my basement.

Problem is (which is really minor, but a pain) if I lose connectivity on the machine in the basement, I have to go down and restart Navigator from the main PC in the basement to get ICS working again on the other computers in the network.

Anyone got any ideas on how to remotely start that process or a script that is available to do it?

Thank, Brian

[Greenstead]

Can you not remote desktop to it? XP pro has this feature.
Or there is a free RDC tool at :
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/index.html
Its rather good, and its free.

[BrianJ]

I suppose you could remote desktop... but it's a security risk... sharing control of your desktop remotely.

But I found a solution... which works perfectly.

I set the client PCs to "Never Dial a Connection" in the Internet Options. Then in the DPC Nav set up, there is an option to enable Auto Dial when a network connection is requested. And since ICS is set up, it doesn't care where that request comes from... either the host or the clients, it will start the connection.

So I just fire up e-mail and have it try to log or try to browse a web site, etc... from the client PC. There is a 20-25 second delay if the connection was down for it to reconnect, but it is a workable solution.

Thanks, Brian