How do I remotely administer Mac OS X Snow Leopard from Windows desktop?

"Normal VNC clients only support a password, not a username.

To allow for that to connect to your Mac, in System Preferences » Sharing, click button ""Computer Settings"" and enable ""VNC viewers may control screen with password [..]"".

As an aside: one can also use a Java viewer. I tested the ""Binary *.class and JAR files"" package from TightVNC.

To use it from the command line:

java VncViewer HOST name_or_ip_of_your_mac

To use it from a browser: its index.html file is just an example. But even when that is fixed one cannot easily use a browser to connect to just any remote computer, as Java by default would only be allowed to connect to the host from which the applet was downloaded. But if you don't mind running both Screen Sharing and Web Sharing on the Mac that you want to access, then:

In Terminal, to host the applet from a new folder ""vnc"":

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents/
sudo mkdir -m 777 vnc
curl http://www.tightvnc.com/download/1.3.10/tightvnc-1.3.10_javabin.tar.gz | tar xzv -C vnc

Edit vnc/index.html to add classes/ in ARCHIVE=""classes/VncViewer.jar"", and to change the port from 5901 to 5900. (Optionally also change the dimensions and other parameters. Setting ""Open new window"" to ""true"", and ""Scaling factor"" to ""auto"" seems nice, but note that the new window will close if the (unused) parent browser window is closed.)
Enable both Screen Sharing and Web Sharing through System Preferences » Sharing (and check that above-mentioned ""VNC viewers may control screen with password [..]"" is set).
Ensure ports 80 and 5900 are allowed in your firewall, and maybe even set up some port mapping in a router. Alternatively: things will be more secure when enabling SSH through Sharing » Remote Login, and use a tunnel to connect to the Mac. Like on Windows with PuTTY:

putty.exe -ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 -L 5900:localhost:5900 user@name_or_ip_of_your_mac

Simply browse to something like http://name_or_ip_of_your_mac/vnc (or, when using the tunnel: http://localhost:8080/vnc)

(Tested from a Mac running 10.6 with Java 6, towards a Mac running Screen Sharing on 10.5.x, and from WinXP to 10.6.x.)"

"you can always use TeamViewer to remote control ""Mac OS X Snow Leopard from Windows"".

Note: version 5 (with video chat support) is not yet available for Mac OS, you'll have to use version 4.x on a Mac.

TeamViewer is free for personal use."

You can connect using TightVNC to Snow Leopard if you choose LAN, or in options deselect "Auto select best settings" and then highlight "Full colours".
You can connect using TightVNC to Snow Leopard if you choose LAN, or in options deselect "Auto select best settings" and then highlight "Full colours".

You could also add your Mac to a free account at www.logmein.com. This would also give you remote control from outside your office/home.

"I have to do just this and I am using Logmein.com free to do that. It's almost zero configuration (you install the app, connect it to a logmein account you created and maybe a reboot).
You can upgrade to Logmein Pro if you also need to share files between the computers but I rarely do and use Skype or Gmail whenever I need to.

You connect to the Mac from within a browser."