Forum Discussion

diggio's avatar
diggio
New Contributor
4 years ago

Black screen when using remote control on RDP connection to Windows Server 2016

Our end users log into terminal servers via RDP. When we use LogMeIn Rescue, the remote control will typically start with a black screen (not always but it happens almost every time). I can see their...
Problem
  • MrHappy4's avatar
    MrHappy4
    3 years ago
    Come to find out, it seems to be a problem with the computer itself, somehow. The problem fixes itself when we open the lid of the laptop.

    When the lid is closed and we use LMI and RDP, the screen is blank for anything, no Run command or Control Panel, or anything. When we open the laptop, everything works just fine and the screen shows up just fine, even if the RDP was blank a second ago. As soon as we close the lid again, everything in the RDP stops again and I can’t click any icons or do any commands.

    Never had the problem on any other computers. We leave the computers in the office and the users LMI into them to run the programs, so we never needed to have the lids open. This one will have to be though.
kbar's avatar
kbar
Active Contributor

It appears that some recent LMI update now requires a monitor to be attached and turned on. We've gotten around it by using the "fake display dongles" so LMI thinks there is a monitor attached. But for remote diagnostics and  help it kind of is a big missed. 

 

LMI update? Crickets.

GlennD's avatar
GlennD
GoTo Manager
3 months ago

Hi kbar, that is incorrect. 

 

Headless computers requiring a dongle or a display cable to be connected is nothing new or specific to LMI Rescue. The dongle/display cable shorts 2 pins which tells the computer a display is connected, this results in the OS initializing the graphics card and allocating memory as if a real monitor were present. Applications can then render as normal, despite having no actual visible output. 

 

If you have a computer that was working headless without a dongle but then stopped, I would first check if the driver had recently updated. If it is a laptop check the settings around how it behaves when the lid is closed.

 

  • kbar's avatar
    kbar
    Active Contributor
    3 months ago

    Not our experience.

     

    The requirements for dongles seem to be new to us. Headless machines used to work reliably. We routinely apply the Microsoft updates and use the the Intel display drivers. We really don't want using LMI to restrict applying updates.

     

    It's annoying, even having a monitor plugged in (USB C cable), but turned off sometimes gives up the black screen with no way of fixing it without a physical presence.