Customer Reviews

pcAnywhere 10.5 Host & Remote

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I've used PCAW for over ten years now, and been through every new release. The product just gets less and less stable, and we have asked for a refund on version 10.5. I use the product to connect to at least 50 networks, some by modem, others by IP. Version 10.5 dropped support for DOS-based clients, which we still have some of; but you have to remove earlier versions when you install 10.5, which gives me no alternative to connect to those hosts. Also, be prepared to replace your pre-9.2 versions if you want 10.5 as they can't coexist -- which means, you have no way to connect to older hosts (I'm not sure, but I think they also dropped compatibility with some Windows versions, which means hosts running older windows versions would have to purchase a new license).

We had several incidents where we could NEVER connect reliably with Windows 2000 hosts. Support is near-nonexistent, with the Symantec website blaming everyone else PLUS the kitchen sink for the problems, but giving no solutions. At one point, we tried to connect and got simply a blank screen. On visiting their website, I found numerous similar situations on their support discussion forum, and their answer was ... "this could be a video card, or it could be a modem, or it could be phone line problems". But it couldn't be their software.

Version 10.5 appears to be a tremendous step backward. We tried it only because we were having problems with version 9.2 under Windows 2000.

Perhaps my greatest concern now is where to find a different product that will solve this problem. I've used PCAW for so long I've come to rely heavily on it.

I think this problem is greater than just PCAW. Other Symantec products seem to suffer from similar situations. We've had great difficulty in installing Norton Antivirus under W2K -- in some instances requiring lengthy procedures to "uninstall" previously failed installations. All this costs money. Same thing with SystemWorks. Bottom line, it seems like Symantec is cranking out some fairly bad software at this time. Once you get it to work, you may be okay, but it just really seems to lack stability.

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).

You would think that a product would improve with time -- but no, not pcAnywhere! It is, always has been, and probably always will be deeply flawed. I installed this product on two Windows 2003 Servers. On one of them, the host service kept failing whenever I tried to initiate a file transfer. On the other server, file transfers worked fine but the visual display was a distortion of black and white lines. It's amazing -- every single version I work with has some problem that keeps me from being able to move it into production. And version 10.5 is no exception. Save your money!

OK folks, let's get this straight. PC-Anywhere (or any such remote-control software) is NOT for servers! (I am a MCSE certified Systems Engineer with over 15 years of experience in large network environments...trust me when I tell you this). Remote-control software is also not the best solution for setting up remote-access for several network users.

PC Anywhere is great for what it should be used for -- an individual getting in to control his/her personal PC. It will work well over dial-up or broadband speeds, and has deacent security built in.

This new version does not seem to bring a lot to the table over older versions, but overall still a very solid product for remote DESKTOP control.

But please, if you feel the impulse to put PC Anywhere on a server, stop and go find a qualified systems administrator who can tell you the RIGHT way to support remote Windows servers.

I'm not going to lie, PC Anywhere is certainly a good program, but you should know there are other programs out there. They will also provide you with remote access that is just as secure and feature-rich as PC Anywhere. The one I recommend is LogMeIn, because it not only is fast and secure, but it's also free.