Recreating a deleted HelpAssistant account on Windows XP

Posted by Dark Training on August 20, 2010 tags: | windows

Lets sapose that you want to use the offer remote assistance function of Windows but someone has deleted the HelpAssistant account from the machine. If you Try to just make a new one by hand it wont allow remote assistance to work.

The process for making a new account is actually really simple and I was shocked that when I googled for this no one mentioned it.

Open cmd.exe and execute command: 
sessmgr -service

In C:\Windows\ it should create new file "sessmgr.setup.log". go ahead and open it. It should contain the following:

********* Install/uninstall sessmgr service *********
Installing sessmgr service
HelpAssistant account name - HelpAssistant
......
*** Finish Setup with Status 0x00000000 ***

Reboot the system.

After you reboot the system go to the user manager and you should notice that the HelpAssistant account is disabled. Go ahead and re-enable it.

You should now be able to send a remote assistance request.

*Make sure that you enabled remote assistance and that the firewall has the remote assistance ports open.