I'm going to go with an assumption that you're not familiar with VNC. If you are, my apologies; please let me know. First of all, VNC servers are extremely fas

I'm going to go with an assumption that you're not familiar with VNC. If you are, my apologies; please let me know. First of all, VNC servers are extremely fast to set up deterministically, but I will concede that the server GUIs do suffer from "blury grid of knobs and switches" syndrome, so it'd be something you'd be doing once you had remote access via some other option (eg, GotoMyPC). (And of course you can test the VNC connection while the other remote system is still running.) The only other bit of config required is doing the necessary port forwarding on your parents' router and/or modem. (I would recommend using a nonstandard port, and also using a port outside the range nmap uses, for added security. :P) Once the VNC server is installed and the router configured, the setup will be rock solid unless the modem(&/+)router fail[s]; the dyndns setup glitches; or Windows itself loses it badly (for example with a virus), but AMT can cover that, which was why I suggested that solution. FWIW, when I move out I fully expect I'll be doing GUI remote support via a combination of TigerVNC and AMT depending on what the situation calls for (I expect most things will be solveable via SSH, since everything uses Linux here, and I haven't needed to configure any VMs yet). Finally, VNC predates the idea of things not being peer-to-peer. The server runs on the destination machine. Everything is configured manually by you so there's nothing that will suddenly "go down" one day. I cannot recommend enough that you try this. Remember that you can figure it all out locally if you have two machines available. I'm happy to provide further info/pointers if you like!