Originally written as a launcher app for VNC sessions onto other machines, VNCHelper is able to launch any application, URL, file or folder. It's as small on your screen as possible, and remembers where it's placed.

Clicking each item on the menu brings up a sub menu containing more commands. Each item on this sub menu has a title, command line and also parameters you can set. For a VNC session, the title might be the hostname of the machine you want to control, the command line the path to vncviewer.exe, and the parameters the command line parameters you need to start a session.

Any top-level items which start with a space are coloured with a blue background. Those starting with a period are coloured red, and those with an underscore are green. Top-level items are sorted alphabetically, the sub menu items are ordered according to how you choose, and can be made bold by checking a box.

Each top level item can be given a hostname. Where the text %HOST% appears in subitem commands, this hostname is substituted.

Data is stored in a file in the same directory as the executable, called vnchelper.ini

Auto-windows

When you create or edit an item you can use the top-right boxes to quickly create entries in the list which are useful when adding a Windows server. Type the server name in the Auto-Windows box, and the list of drives the machine has in the Drives box, so for a server called "dc1" which has a c: drive and a d: drive, you'd type "dc1" and "cd" in the boxes. Click the Add button to the right to add items to open:

• RDP session
• The admin share of each drive
• Manage
• Reboot
• Shutdown

User parameter

If you include the text '???' (three question marks) anywhere in the Params box of an item, when that item is clicked a box will appear asking for input. The '???' is then replaced with whatever you then type into the box when the command is executed, so to edit a variable file in notepad, set the Command to be 'notepad.exe' and the Param to be just '???'. Click the item, and type the path to the file you'd like to open.

Versions

v3.01 - fixes a problem when cancelling a copy of a top-level menu item
v3.20 - auto-windows added, ??? parameter added

If you used an earlier version of this application, this is a separate program. It does not store data in the same way, so will not interfere with v1 or v2. The down side to this is that the app does not import earlier data.

vnchelper.zip (51k)