VNC from Windows to Mac freezing constantly

Question

I'm trying to VNC into an OSX 10.4.11 box from Vista using RealVNC and TightVNC. I can connect successfully, but after a minute or so my VNC window freezes completely, while on the Mac the AppleVncServer process starts eating up huge amounts of RAM (100Mb +) and CPU (40-50%) - but the Mac doesn't freeze. When this happens no-one can VNC in anymore until the AppleVncServer process is restarted.

I have trawled through all the available options on the VNC clients I'm using and I don't see anything obvious that would cause this behaviour. I'd be grateful for any insights into this.

Darko

UPDATE: After more troubleshooting it seems this happens only when I to a copy on Vista. As soon as a copy operation is performed VNC freezes up. Note that copy paste inside VNC works fine....

Reflecting back on this, it should probably have been moved to superuser — Darko, Jul 29 '11 at 04:17

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 04 '09 at 21:41

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This is a known issue with clipboard incompatability.

For Example a TightVNC connection configuration file will contain disableclipboard=0. Change that value to 1 and your VNC server on the MAC side will not crash.

answered Dec 04 '09 at 21:41

I confirmed Evan's answer - it's the clipboard thing. i'm trying winxp to macosx – user59553 Nov 08 '10 at 15:44

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '09 at 01:55

2

I've had similar problems in the past with RealVNC and TightVNC.

Have you tried UltraVNC yet? This solved the problem for us. Not sure why.

answered Jul 14 '09 at 01:55

KPWINC

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thanks i'll give it a go. also troubleshooted some more and updated question – Darko Jul 14 '09 at 02:00
sorry mate, Ultra VNC wont even log on. According to UltraVNC no-one uses passwords longer than 8 characters – Darko Jul 14 '09 at 02:07
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Very strange. We're using UltraVNC with an 11 character password. – KPWINC Jul 14 '09 at 02:30
+1 for UltraVNC, RealVNC and TightVNC sorely need improvements... – Avery Payne Aug 15 '09 at 01:06
+1. Switching to UltraVNC and turning off the clipboard option fixed this problem for me. UltraVNC looks way better than RealVNC too. – the_mandrill Jun 28 '11 at 21:48

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 15 '09 at 01:03

I had exactly the same problem with Tiger except I was trying to remote in from a Windows XP machine. I tried a variety of different clients, all with exactly the same results.

In the end I just turned off the VNC server included with Mac OS X and installed Vine Server instead. Never had a problem with Vine Server, no matter which client I used on the Windows PC.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/osxvnc/

I should probably mention, when I upgraded to Leopard, I went back to using the included VNC server. It seems to be more stable.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 28 '09 at 04:55

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Shot in the dark - As you are saying it is to do with file copy, possibly try running vnc viewer as administrator or disable UAC as it could be a permission issue.

answered Jul 28 '09 at 04:55

William Hilsum

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VNC from Windows to Mac freezing constantly

4 Answers4