Helping a Friend Through Remote Assistance with Windows Messenger

Helping a friend through remote assistance means that you will help them by connecting with them via the internet and you will also be with them without being with them. What that means is that you will have access to their computer via your computer; you will be able to assist them with whatever they need, so long as it's not a hardware problem.

There are many remote assistance programs out for sale these days, but what you probably don't know is that you already have one installed on your computer; all that's needed to use it is an MSN email account. In this article I will walk you through the steps that you need to take in order to connect to a friends computer via the already installed remote assistance program on your Windows computer.

- Get a MSN email account. An MSN account can be created by going to www.msn.com and then clicking on the Hotmail link that shows up there. This will take you through the process of getting a Hotmail email address; that's all you need to do.

- Download MSN Messenger. To download the MSN messenger, go to www.msn.com again and look for the link that says Messenger. Once you're taken to the messenger page look for the link that says Download Now.

- Add each other as messenger contacts. To add your friend as a contact all you have to do is go to Contacts, Add A Contact, and then go through the process of inputting all of your friends information there.

- Go to Start, then click on Help and Support.

- Under the Ask for assistance headline, click on Invite a friend to connect to your computer with Remote Assistance.

- Click on Invite someone to help you.

- Chose someone to connect to via Remote Assistance from the list of your messenger contacts that comes up, or get someone to send you an invite using the same process.

- Once you have received or sent an invitation wait for a MSN Messenger message pop-up to appear with instructions on finalizing connection.

Now that you know the process and the definition of remote assistance, you should go out and try it yourself. If you or your friend have any trouble with this process, try searching for Remote Assistance in the search box of your Help & Support page. If this doesn't help, as a last option, try going online and searching for a free remote access program and then go from there.