I dont want to say anything
DavidStein
I dont want to say anything definitively because I really only have what I have googled in the past and my own experience but with that caveat:
it is my belief that it is possible that a random USB IR receiver you purchase from ebay to be programmed/designed to only receive IR codes in different frequencies than what your remote outputs. But that in practice most remotes are close enough, such that you will almost certainly be fine. I couldn’t prove the receiver i bought would work with my remote, but I bought it and it did. I think most receivers from gateway/hp/whatever have a little red LED that blinks everytime it receivers an IR signal, so you know its physically working even if you are having trouble getting your computer to recognize that its receiving a code.
if you were really worried and wanted to spend some money (which you dont appear to be), you can always buy a USB-UIRT which has been designed to accept IR codes from pretty much anything you could find, but its 50$:
as for the software, the main ones I know of are HIP, Girder, and Intelliremote. They work by monitoring the IR receiver, when it receives an IR code, it passes it to the program. From there, the program sees what command you want executed when that IR code is received, and executes it. I dont know exactly why HIP wouldnt work for me, but I found intelliremote to ‘just work’ and its not that expensive. they are all very powerful in what you can do, they can even execute scripts.