RDP Black Hole

I'm trying to RDP into my new MediaCenter 2005 setup. I walked through the
steps in MCE to allow RDP. I then can connect to it just fine from an XP
Pro SP2 machine, however all I see is a black screen.

On the MCE box if I make the MCE window smaller than full screen then RDP
into it I can see the surrounding Windows desktop but the MCE windows is a
black hole. Any ideas? Is this a video driver issue? I have an nVidia
GEFORCE FX 5200 card with the very latest drivers (v71.84).

-Brett-

 

MCE 2005 (my experience) will either Exhibit this behavior, or tell you that its stopping the MCE interface, as some features such as Live/Recorded TV and My Videos don't work well over an RDP connection. I haven't determined why some just get the black screen and others get the notice an the MCE shell gets minimized to the Taskbar.

 

71.84 is known to have problems. 71.89 has fewer problems but 66.93 seems to
be the last known good driver version.

You might also investigate www.realvnc.com for VNC as a remote desktop
replacement.

Dana Cline - MVP

 

Are you logging in to your Media Center via RDP while Media Center is open?
If so, try closing Media Center first. When launched directly on the PC,
Media Center runs in DirectX (hardware-accelerated 3d) mode; when launched
via Remote Desktop it runs in GDI (flat) mode. Trying to run DirectX over
RDP won't work...

 

I see DirectX is the problem. Having to exit MC first defeats the whole
purpose of RDP'ing to the machine since I'm not at the machine. I'll bail
on the whole idea. Thanks.

-Brett-

 

You could also just end the ehshell.exe process once you RDP in and then
re-launch it.