Is there a way to start and stop slimserver from a remote computer? I am running Vista Home Premium.

It should be possible alright.
If you have a look for the post from me in this thread
http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=5749
you'll notice I talk about an application called netcat (url for download for Windows available on this site)
http://www.securityfocus.com/tools/139

This application would allow you to create a simple batch file on windows that you could call that would start Slimserver for you.
What server is your SlimServer running on? With the netcat running on the PhotoBridge (see here for more details http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=12806 you could start a SlimServer service from your PhotoBridge if you wanted.

Its a bit late, so I'm being brief, but if you give more details as to your full setup and what you're trying to do, I should be able to give more specifics.

i have slimserver running on my upstairs desktop (Vista) and I want to be able to turn it on or off from my laptop (Vista) either when I'm at home on my network or traveling over the internet. But mostly when I'm at home. I hate having to go upstairs to turn the server on or off. I've tried sharing the slimserver folder but that didn't help. I used to be able to do it thru remote desktop, but Vista doesn't have that application anymore, only on an XP machine. I know this can't be diffilcult but i can't figure it out and I don't want to run more servers on my system.

Well, there are a number of remote server type options available, but if you don't want to run another server, there is a solution I give in one of the above links.
On your slimserver machine you could have a batch file (a BAT) that starts up when the machine is booted up. This file would check every 30 seconds for the existence of a file in a particular folder. If the file is present it starts SlimServer.

Heres an example of the code

@ECHO OFF
REM checkfile.bat
REM Checks every 30 seconds for a certain file to exist. If the file exists, it calls an
REM external BAT file, deletes the trigger file and resumes its 30 second check

:MYMAINLOOP

REM Change the filename to whatever filename you like to check for
REM We use the CALL command as this returns the flow of command back to this script
REM when the BAT file we call has finished

IF NOT EXIST c:\storage\filecheck.txt GOTO SLEEPSECTION

CALL c:\storage\myaction.bat

DEL c:\storage\filecheck.txt


REM There does not seem to be a sleep command avaiable, the following is a hack that
REM emulates a sleep. The number after the n (minus 1) is the number of seconds delay we want

:SLEEPSECTION

ping -n 31 127.0.0.1>nul

GOTO MYMAINLOOP

In the above case, the myaction.bat file would actually start Slimserver.
You could easily refine this so that it looks at the content of the 'notification' file and starts/stops/does some other action depending on the contents.

So, in use it would work like this. Your upstairs machine has a shared folder. When you want to start SlimServer you put a file (with a particular name) in this folder. A script running on the upstairs machine sees the file, calls whatever action you want done, and deletes the file.

Would this solution appeal to you?

Thanks for your time and effort soiaf, but that is a little over my head. I'll try to work with my shares a little more to see if ican get it it work. I noticed on my local machine the shortcut link to start slimserver looks like this C:/Program Files/Slimserver/Slimserver.exe --start, I tried changing start to stop and that did nothing. Would you know the word to stop it? I only can get it it stop from the taskbar icon. Thanks for all your help, Mike

Sorry, I'm afraid I don't know how you can stop it like that.
I think if it was running as a Windows service that it would be possible to stop/start it, but I don't know using just the normal executables.
I have an idea of how it might be possible to stop it using a small program, but I think it might be very complicated to setup.

Thanks for your time anyway.