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Conrad wrote:

However, I'm trying to remotely help someone over the phone, she says she disabled both and still same result, "double clicking or selecting Full Control doesn't connect to server or give any errors or popups".

The feedback is on the connection icon/icons in the address book. If connection isn't possible, the icons will be in offline state.

I haven't found I could trust or use the online/offline/unknown status as accurate.  I have always had older servers appear under Online but never be connectable anymore (less of or not much of an issue after 6.6).  Out of 4 online hosts, 3 have 'Last IP' and 'Version', the 4th didn't.  I connect to the 4th, it fails on first try but successful after 5 second retry. Not sure how it determines its online but not getting Last IP and Version, I'd expect that to be part of your handshake or keepalives or whatever you're using.

Just now, if I try and connect to a powered off offline host, I get a pop up with 5 second count down 'unable to connect'.  Is that new or fairly recent?  

When I first set this up, I made two entries in the address book and sent it to her.  One was the remote machine using direct connection through router port forward, and the 2nd the same settings but using the Internet-ID (in case the router changed or something). When I initially set it up, I could often see one appear online and the other unknown, both online, or both unknown. But they both worked if double clicking. Now both appear for me under Online.

I just checked one of her text messages from first tries when Norton firewall was still enabled.

I do see the 'Direct Server' and 'Fallback Server' as you describe. However, Fallback has a red check mark and says online, Direct has green check mark and says unknown.

So before trying to connect, or perhaps describing after unsuccessfully double clicking (the text is written after she tried, so I think this is the state AFTER her attempt), the direct connection shows unknown and the Internet-ID connection showed Online.  

I don't know what she means by "check mark" (hmm, maybe she thought and meant check BOX). It's a little computer screen, obviously :P  But for me, green computer screen is what I see for Logged on, orange for Online, and black for Offline/Unknown.  

Hopefully I'll find out what exactly she was talking about in the morning.  She uninstalled Norton completely and still didn't have any success, but made it sound like maybe something changed in her last update:

Tried to take full control of each, it says `logging on` `then the offline/unknown error comes up.

I'll try and clarify if she was always seeing "unable to connect" pop up like I do for an Offline host for real, or if she could see the address book connection change from Online to Offline/Unknown or what.  She is not a technical person and so some details could be (read: likely) mistaken.

But some additional diagnostics to help the user would be a welcome addition.  Thanks.

Issue resolved.  Turned out it was the Viewer being 6.8.0.1 and the server host being 6.9.1.0.  I didn't realize 6.8.0.1 Viewer couldn't talk to 6.9.1.0 beta.  So just upgrading her Viewer to 6.9.1.0 made the connecting work.

You might want to make that clear on the Beta release notes page that 6.8.0.1 viewers can't talk to the 6.9.1.0 hosts.

I also saw the check marks she was seeing. Doesn't look like my screen and I didn't take any screenshots. But it's not intuitive as to what the check marks mean, since it was green for the offline connection and red for the online connection.  Also, it frequently only showed the Internet-ID connection as online and the Direct connection Offline/unknown until double clicked and connected.