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Changing the behaviour of Ranger Remote Control Tutor when connecting to clients

Article Number: 0000000021

Created On: 2007-11-03 06:37:05

Last Updated: 2008-11-20 13:52:33

Number of Views: 875

Question

How do i change the behavier of RRC when it connects to clients?

Symptoms

Client> Client IP address/name does not respond.

When using Ranger Remote Control you must first connect to the Student machine(s) that you wish to perform tasks against. If one of the machines is not available, this may be turned off or have been disconnected from the network, the Tutor Application would wait up to 30 seconds before the connection times out and an error would be displayed.

If more than one machine is not available then this delay in the Tutor starting would be multiplied by the number of unavailable machines, also after each connection failure an error message would be displayed.

From Ranger Remote Control 7.0 and later, it has been possible to suppress the connection error messages and from Ranger Remote Control version 8.02.2 and later it is now possible to change the connection timeout value.

Cause

When a Ranger Remote Control tutor has been set to Startup with a 'Known List of Students', there are two registry entries that can be set that will affect the behaviour of the Ranger Remote Control application when it cannot connect to a student machine.

One of these can be used to suppress the connection failure message and the other controls the Timeout value. Neither of these registry setting are created by the Ranger Remote Control installation program and will therefore not be present by default.

Resolution

To enable the Timeout, or suppression of error, you will need to run the registry editor and create new value entries in the registry of the tutor machine.

Instructions

IMPORTANT: This document contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs.

1. Changing the Connection Timeout value Ranger Remote Control v8.02 and later Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Productive Computer Insight\PCICTL\ConfigList\Ranger Remote Control Value Type: String value Value Name: TcpipConnectTimeout The value for this string, specifies the time in milliseconds that the Ranger Remote Control Tutor program will wait for a connection to the Student to be established e.g. a value of 2000 would mean the Tutor would wait for a maximum of 2 seconds before moving on to the next student. If this period is too small, the clients may not respond in time, causing the Ranger Remote Control Tutor not to connect to the target machines.

2. Suppressing connection errors Ranger Remote Control v7.0 to v 8.02 Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Productive Computer Insight\PCICTL\ConfigList\Ranger Remote Control Value Type: String value Value Name: StartupNoErrIfNoRespond Value: 1 or 0 When set to 1 the Tutor will no longer display an error message if it cannot connect to one of the Students. Ranger Remote Control v8.5 The suppression of error is set by default and therefore there is no need to edit the registry key.

Update

In RRC 9.00 and above the location of where the Tutor Configuration is stored in the registry was changed. This change was made for Environments where Users would not have rights to write to the Local Machine, but would have rights to write to their logged on users Profile.

From RRC 9.02.003 and above a registry setting has been added that can be set to revert RRC to write to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE rather than to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

Reverting the Tutor to write its configuration to the local machine will ensure that the same configuration is then applied to any user that logs onto this machine.

Details

Delete the following registry setting if present:-

Registry location: HKLM\Software\Productive Computer Insight\PCICTL\
ValueName: NSSregkey
Value: hklm

Add the following registry setting:-

Registry location: HKLM\Software\Productive Computer Insight\PCICTL\
ValueName: NSSuseHKLM
Value: 1

Once this value has been added to a RRC 9.02.0003 installation then the registry settings will be stored in the central location.

Testing

After setting the above registry entries. Log on to your tutor and try to connect to a client that is not available, i.e. powered off, no error message should pop up. If the client is available, your tutor should be able to connect to the student even if the waiting may take longer than before

Applies To

Ranger Remote Control v 7.0 or later

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