How many network administration tools born in the 90’s are still innovative today?

                                           VNCscan is one of them!

VNCscan Turns 13 Years Old

My name is Steve Bostedor and I started writing the first version of VNCScan with Philippe Green way back in April of 1999.  As with most of the features in today’s Swiss army knife of a tool, VNC Scan was originally intended to help me manage my own network.

Phil and I put up our first website and public release of version 1.2 in July of 1999. (link credits of archive.org).  Phil and I released a few more free versions under TGCS (Two Guys and a Compiler Software). 

I released the first versions as freeware because I was very frustrated with other software companies charging too much money for their tools.  Their per-computer and per-install license models were pricing their software out of the hands of the network administrators who could use them the most.  I wanted everyone to be able to use a great tool like VNCscan no matter how small their budget was.

A Rapid Growing User Base

By version 3.0, VNCScan development became a full time job just to keep up with all of the feature requests.  With the financial burdens and the time that it took me away from my family, I had no choice to release a paid version of the program.

Other similar programs were charging in excess of $10,000 USD to manage networks of only a few hundred PC’s and servers.  I came to a compromise that I would charge only enough to keep the company profitable and not a penny more.  From this philosophy, the per-admin license model was born.  To my knowledge, VNCscan was the first software in the world to be licensed under that model.

Under the Per-Admin model, you can run as many copies of the program as you need and manage as many PC’s and servers as you have for only one small license fee for each administrator using the program.  That fee is only $59 today and has been that price for almost a decade.

A Company Of Firsts

The consumer centric Per-Admin license model was just one of the many areas in which VNCScan pioneered and changed the industry forever.  We were the first VNC Manager, and the first one to have a multi-threaded scanning engine.  VNCscan hosted the first integrated VNC deployment tool and pushed the bar higher and higher as copycat software began to follow our lead. 

In order to help fight spyware on remote computers, VNCScan became the first tool in the world to remotely reboot a computer into safe mode and then control the desktop remotely.  I wasn’t sure if anyone other than me thought that was a cool idea until I saw it snatched up as a bragged about feature in our competitors release notes months later. 

VNCScan has celebrated a lot of industry “firsts” over the years including the ability to remotely enable RDP, execute powershell, Kix, and VBS scripts remotely, and much more.  This trend continues today. 

An Organic Cycle

I have worked in the IT field for almost two decades.  Many of the time saving features found in VNCScan such as the ability to test the speed of your LAN between you and a remote computer were born out of my own necessity.  Other great features were included as user submitted ideas. 

VNCScan is such a progressive and feature rich product because it is grown organically from the field in which it is consumed.  Network Administrators from all over the globe rely upon the software daily and are gracious enough to contribute suggestions and bug reports religiously.  This helps the program grow  stronger and become even more indispensible to those of you in the field.

Thank you!

We may be the code monkeys behind the monitors but you are the reason for our success.  Every interaction with someone from our user base is a breath of fresh air.  I am humbled at the great feedback that the product receives in your blogs and social network postings.  I truly feel unworthy of such an honor but am eternally thankful.

From my family to yours … Thank You!

Steve Bostedor
Bozteck Founder and CTO

You can download the latest beta of VNCScan Database Edition here.

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Importing Existing Groups and Computers

If you are upgrading, you will be presented with the following dialog box upon first run:

Once you select Yes, you will be taken to the following dialog:

Pressing the Import button will pull all of your groups and computer information from your XML files into the new database.  Once the import is complete, it will close and present you with the new main form.

Sharing Computers and Groups

You can now share your computers and groups with the rest of your team members.  Here’s How!

1. Create a folder on a commonly mapped network location.  You MUST map a common drive letter.  A \\UNC path causes problems.
2. Change the location of the data on the MASTER computer as shown below:
3. Choose “Yes” when asked to copy your files.
4. Perform step 2 on all of the other computers but when asked to copy the files, say “No”

Other Improvements

•  The performance and reliability of the background scanning has been vastly improved.  It uses 80% less CPU cycles and uses 95% less memory overhead
• If you have ever experienced the bug that caused your groups or computers to disappear, you can say good riddance to that one in this version
• Managed groups with a lot of computers in them should load in a fraction of the time
• Computer search (in the upper right of the main form) speed has been increased by over 90%
• Performance improvements have been made to many common forms such as the computer properties window
• Some people saw a phantom group show up frequently named “Creation Date”.  No more.

[Download VNCScan 2012.1.1]

Change log

• Updated to the latest version of UltraVNC for remote deployment
• Redesigned much of the interface to make things even more intuitive.  You can see a screen shot of the new form here.
• Added a button to the main form common tasks to enable RDP Remote Desktop on computers remotely
• Rewrote the XML data handling engine to improve performance when navigating data in the application
• We all hate bugs so we killed a bunch of them
• MUCH more room for the RDP tab.  By default, the RDP sessions take advantage of the increased real estate.

Overview

VNCScan has had remote screen captures for about a year, now, but the latest version has brought that feature more front and center for you.  With only a few clicks, you can now capture the screen of a remote computer to your console.

To use this feature, you will need to supply remote administrator level credentials to VNCScan so that it can access the desktop resources on the remote computers.  You can set this easily in the group or computer properties

Here are some basic requirements:

• You must supply Administrative access to the remote computer
• Firewall must allow connection to TCP 445 and 139 for file transfers
• Remote computers must be Windows 2000 SP4 or better
• Someone must be logged onto the remote computer or no screen will capture

How To

    You can get to this feature on an individual desktop by simply right-clicking on a computer and then choosing . 

    You can also place the screen captures into a thumbnail view so that you can monitor an entire lab or classroom in one screen.  To do this, simply right-click a computer, then choose Thumbnails, then choose to either add it to a new tab window or add it to an existing one.  It’s that simple!

    The remote screen capture feature in VENM does not require that VNC or any other client software be installed or running on the remote computer.  It uses Bozteck patented technology to automatically snap a capture of the remote desktop with the lightest footprint of any other application we’ve ever seen!

Check it out!

You can download a fully functional trial of Bozteck VENM console here.

Rules

• Create a blog post, twitter update, or other website status telling us how VNCScan helps you accomplish network management tasks or how it could be improved to help you work more effectively.
• The post needs to have a link back to http://www.bozteck.com/vncscan or reference @VNCScan on Twitter
• Comment on this blog post or email contest@bozteck.com with the location of your status update
• Each contestant can enter a new post to win as many times as you’d like.  The more entries, the greater your odds of winning!

Reward

• On June 1, 2011, all respondents will be placed into a random pool and the lucky winner will receive a free Site License and 4 years of free upgrades for their entire organization!
• If you already have a valid license, the Site License will take effect on the day that your current upgrade period expires.

Note: Please only post on websites or social networking accounts that you control.  Posting to third party discussion forums will not count as an entry.

While they are working feverishly to fix the bug, we’ve decided to release an update to VNCScan to deploys and uses the previous stable release of UltraVNC. 

If you have already deployed the UltraVNC 1.0.9 and are experiencing problems, you can fix them by installing this 2011.3.15 update of VNCScan Console, then re-deploy UltraVNC to those desktops.

Download: VNCScan 2011.3.15.exe

I just wanted to put up a quick blog post to share a cool new way that I’ve found to share VNCScan data among multiple computers.  Dropbox.com is an online storage service.  Their free accounts give you 2GB of disk space.  They have a great Windows desktop client that mounts that storage under your “My Documents\My Dropbox” in Windows Explorer.

Any data written to that folder is synchronized with the online storage; which is then synchronized on any other computer that has the client installed.

As with any big change, test this out in a lab environment before committing to this in a live scenario.

How It’s Done

1. Sign up for a free account at http://www.dropbox.com

2. Download and install the dropbox tool for Windows https://www.dropbox.com/install

3. Copy your “My Documents\VNCScan” folder to the Dropbox folder (usually "My Documents\MyDropbox")

4. Open VNCScan

5. Click Preferences in the toolbar

6. Choose “Support Files”

7. Change the location of the VNCScan data to the new location of the VNCScan folder

8. Choose NO to the prompt to move the data (you’ve already copied it)

9. Choose OK

10. Close VNCScan, then open it again

* Do steps all steps except for #3 on each computer that you want to share the same data with.

Key Points

• This solution is free
• This solution requires the latest version of VNCScan to function properly
• Each computer must log onto dropbox using the same username/password
• The dropbox folder location should be the same on each computer
• We’ve only tested this with up to 10 computers. If you’re using more, back up often.  Let us know your level of success in the comments!
• You may want to go into the Dropbox client preferences and turn off notifications. They can get annoying really fast.

You can download it here.

Changes include:

• Added deployment of TightVNC 2.0.2
• Added support for TightVNC 2.0.2 in the VNC password changer and other management tools
• Improved the GUI for the VNC deployment tools
• VNC version now updates automatically after a deployment has completed
• Numerous bug fixes and performance enhancements

There have been a few reports of missing groups and other data after an upgrade to version 2010.2.4 of VNCScan.  While we’re tracking down what may have caused this for some of you, I want to post a quick how-to to help you get thing back up and going on your own.  It appears to only be happening to people who have modified the location of the stored data files from the default location.

Step-By-Step

1. Click on the main Preferences

   

2. Click on the Support Files section

   

3. Click on the Change button for the location of the data root:
   
4. Browse for the location where your VNCScan data is stored.  This is the folder that contains the subfolders of Data, Jobs, and Profiles.

   

5. Click OK.  When prompted to move the data from the original place, choose NO

   

6. Choose OK to the settings Window and all of your groups should show back up.  You may need to restart the program.

• UltraVNC x64 is now deployed to remote x64 computers automatically
• Fixed: The UltraVNC video driver wouldn’t install properly on some XP systems. Keep in mind that x64 systems have new driver signing requirements that prompt the user upon install.  For this reason, we suggest that you manually install the video driver if required on x64 computers.
• Deployment tool remembers the last profile you pushed and selects it automatically.
• Deployment tool chooses the correct system drive letter for the remote system, now.  It used to only use c$.
• Lots of other “just little things” fixes and tweaks all through the program.

Please give some feedback about how well or not-so-well it works for you in the Forums

Download It Here