Streaming tricks and hacks

[alfsoft]

Hello. After playing around with games streaming I got bored. Everything works nice. So I've tried to:

1. Make a complete remote desktop. Almost.
Add Total Commander to the games list. Stream it. Nice! Now I can use my PC as video player, music player, application launcher. The only problem is after launching any application using Total Commander and closing it, my streamed Total Commander window stops to refresh at the remote screen but clicking on it or pressing a keys actually works. It just does not show any changes on the remote screen until I reconnect to streaming session.

2. Play over internet through VPN.
I have an Ubuntu server and an external IP. So I've installed a VPN (pptpd) and connected my both host and client steam PCs over VPN. Voila! Now I can play any game on my parents' netbook right from my home. If you have nothing in the machhines list in the in-home streaming settings just try to edit /etc/pptpd-options file and add (or uncomment) this string:

proxyarp

Do you have any unusual streaming tricks?

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Stream Windows Desktop
------------------------------------

Add "notepad.exe" as a non-Steam game on the host Steam client.

Click on "notepad" from the game list on the client PC to initialize the stream. Once the app is streaming, press the F1 key to launch the help dialog, which tricks Steam into streaming the full desktop; minimize notepad and close the help dialog.

[Rumbalotter]

haha ... awesome, Xaero ... :D ... going to try this tonite

[Hakkelus]

Any tricks to stream games while doing something else like surfing the internet on the host?

[GeeEl]

Adding Internet Explorer and then maximising and minimising the window will show desktop as well.

To Shutdown a remote Win7 host

On remote host:
• Add c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe as a non-steam game
  
• Change name of game to "Shutdown <machine>" eg "Shutdown Win7PC"
  
• Add "/p" to the game command, making it:
  

  "c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe" /p

You can then shut down the remote host by "streaming" the Shutdown game.

There've been numerous requests for this feature, so it should turn up as a stock feature sometime.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Yeah but using Internet Explorer just to stream the desktop seems to have a much bigger memory footprint on the host running in the background; a difference of like 75-100 MB with one tab in IE vs 2 MB with notepad. :P

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Wake-on-LAN w/ Automatic login

This configuration is useful if you have a completely headless Windows streaming server without a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.

If you intend to run your server headless like I do, perform these steps below before disconnecting your monitor, keyboard, and mouse:


Host Windows PC
------------------------

* Enable Wake-on-LAN in the BIOS configuration utility.

* Disable "Error on Keyboard" in the BIOS configuration utility to prevent a missing keyboard from halting POST.

* In Windows, enable Wake-on-LAN in the network adapter properties under the Power Management tab; Also enable "Magic Packet."

* Enable automatic Windows login by opening "netplwiz" then unchecking "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer."

* Automatic Steam boot and login by creating a "Steam.exe" shortcut and copying it to the "Startup" folder. Edit the shortcut properties under "Target" and type:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -silent -login username password

* Obtain NIC MAC address by opening "cmd.exe" then typing "ipconfig /all" and writing down the Physical Address associated with the enabled and currently used network adapter. Write this address down on a piece of paper.

* Shutdown PC


Client Linux PC
---------------------

* Obtain the "wol" package from your Linux distribution and install it.

* Create a very simple shell script named "wakeup.sh" and give it executable permission with "chmod u+x ./wakeup.sh". Open the script with an editor and add this code, replacing the 'XX's with actual MAC address values you wrote down:

#! /bin/sh

wol XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

* Put the script file somewhere convenient, such as on your desktop then just click on it whenever you want to boot your server PC remotely.

That should be it.

[Gimpylung]

Nice trick but isn't ultravnc and it's kin better suited, ctrl alt del support etc..