VNC connection from Windows to Mac drops immediately

This tutorial describes in detail how to setup a remote desktop from Windows to a Mac using putty tools and VNC.

However, my connection is immediately dropped after authentication. (i.e. tunneling and login works, but somehow the VNC session cannot be properly established or displayed). Following other hints I suspect graphics issues but haven't been able to resolve it so far.

Has anyone had this issue?

Or do you know a VNC Viewer that writes helpful log files?

Hauke

Posted 2009-08-21T08:35:19.343

Reputation: 263

What user are you connecting as? Anything useful in putty's logs (if not enabled do it plz) – drAlberT – 2009-08-21T08:54:41.783

Are you doing this over a LAN or over the Internet? – Barry Brown – 2009-08-21T09:43:52.810

Answers

I had a similar issue with a MAC -> PC connection (but without the PuTTY tools)

What I discovered is that the 'Server Type' needs to be implicitly set to the target system or set to 'Other' - Leaving it as 'Automatic' failed to work when connecting between disparate systems.

I can now connect from my iPhone -> PC or MacBook -> PC (and visa-versa) without issue.

user7388

Posted 2009-08-21T08:35:19.343

Reputation:

This worked great for me – Toby Allen – 2009-09-23T19:06:31.247

Did you do this in the OSX VNC setup? – Michael Caron – 2009-12-11T16:35:03.107

I had the same issue using Remmina. After setting the Color depth to High color (16 bit), the connection works fine.

Full instructions:

1) Activate screen sharing on Mac OS X:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -configure -access -on -configure -allowAccessFor -allUsers -configure -restart -agent -privs -all

2) Connect with remmina, using Mac username and password, and Color depth High color (16 bit)

3) Stop Screen Sharing with:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -deactivate -configure -access -off

Reference: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/30239/57296 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/73919/57296

Benedikt Köppel

Posted 2009-08-21T08:35:19.343

Reputation: 584

I discovered that it's a color issue. I used tightvnc leaving "use 8-bit color" unchecked and setting encoding to Hextile. Got through just fine over an SSH tunnel.

Michael Caron

Posted 2009-08-21T08:35:19.343

Reputation: 235

I don't know if it was a color issue for me, but TightVNC is working whereas RealVNC does not. Also, I am pleased with the logging capability fo TightVNC. – sage – 2012-04-07T20:44:07.180

I've had some trouble caused by Leopard's built-in VNC support, which apparently uses non-standard authentication that confuses VNC clients.

The solution was to disable OS X's built-in VNC (Screen Sharing in Preferences) and use Vine VNC instead.

Kornel

Posted 2009-08-21T08:35:19.343

Reputation: 1 225