I'm getting a black screen when I connect to my VNC Server computer

The main reasons you may encounter this are:

* You're connecting to Windows Media Center or similar software
* You're trying to connect to a computer that's using Fast User Switching (i.e. you are in a switched out session)

The workaround for Windows Media Center is below. We do not support Fast User Switching, the workaround in this situation is to login to a non switched out session.

This is likely due to the VNC Mirror Driver, which will be attempting to capture the hardware accelerated video / menus, but is unable to do so by design. You can either lower machine hardware acceleration (this shouldn't impact machine performance, depending on the speed of the machine or the graphical intensity of the video) or you can enable a different update method, instead of the VNC Mirror Driver.

To lower the computer's hardware acceleration:

Windows XP:
Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot

Windows Vista:
Control Panel > Personalization > Display Settings > Advanced Settings > Troubleshoot

If this doesn't work, try playing with the update method settings. Set the UpdateMethod parameter (in VNC Server options, Expert tab) from 2, to 1. If this doesn't work, try setting it to 0.

0 = Polling (Slower over low bandwidth, but will capture the entire framebuffer)
1 = VNC Hooks (Fairly efficient "all-round" update method, but may miss certain GDI hooks in the framebuffer)
2 = VNC Mirror Driver (Extremely fast/efficient capture method, but may miss certain video/3D related events).

* The VNC Mirror Driver should be in use where possible, to provide better performance.
* For times when a 3D application/video cannot be remoted, reverting to VNC Hooks will most likely provide updates, but the performance will be degraded.

Related Articles

No related articles were found.

Attachments

No attachments were found.

Visitor Comments