RDP - Conecting to a blank screen

9/17/2009

Another frustrating day. Everyting works fine for weeks. Then I boot two computers, no changes from earlier in the day and suddenly RDP stops working.

RDP connects, and I see a RDP window, but the contents are black. And the target computer never logs off the interactive user. Very frustrating. Searching yields the tip "Turn off bitmap cacheing". Unfortunately that did not work for me.

After a lot of experimentation, I decided to disable IP6. With Vista, any time I left IP6 enabled on any computer, on any network I would frequently have network problems. So for Vista I always turned it off. For Windows 7, I decided to leave it enabled. However, that turned out to be a bad choice. Over the last few weeks, mapped drives often refuse to connect, or stop working. Now RDP is exhibiting problems.

I disabled IP6, and instantly everything works! I'm not sure why this is, but I'm pretty sure its not my network devices. Under Vista I reproduced this at dozens of locations on dozens of different computers. I've even reproduced it with a crossover cable between two computers. Windows 7 seems to have improved it, but something still seems wrong with the IP6 stack.....

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