Question

I have the following shortcut for offering remote assistance in XP. This appears to be an unsupported URL protocol type in Vista. Are there any workarounds to get this functioning?

hcp://cn=microsoft%20corporation,l=redmond,s=washington,c=us/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/Unsolicited/unsolicitedrcui.htm

Answer

Remote Assistance is a standalone program in Windows Vista. The executable file name is MSRA.EXE (%windir%\system32\msra.exe) and it supports the following command-line arguments:

msra [/? | /expert | /novice | /saveasfile <path> [password] | /openfile <path> | /email <password> | /offerRA <computer>]

where
<path> Is the path to a file to be created or loaded.
<password> Is the password to protect the invitation.
<computer> Is the computer name or IP address of a computer.

Options

/? Display this help message.
/novice Start Remote Assistance and ask for assistance.
/expert Start Remote Assistance and offer assistance.
/saveasfile Create a Remote Assistance invitation by saving to a file.
/openfile Open a Remote Assistance invitation file.
/email Opens the default SMAPI e-mail client with an invitation attached for sending.
/offerra Uses DCOM to launch Remote Assistance on the novice computer remotely; automatically connects.

To launch the Offer Remote Assistance page, type MSRA /expert in Start, Run dialog. Or to connect automatically to a specific computer, use the MSRA /offerra <computername> syntax.