I have installed the free RealVNC on almost all of my machines - real of virtual.
Unfortunately with Vista, the VNC server service does not work. Its not possible to connect to it at all. I disabled UAC and shut off the firewall... but no luck.
The way to fix it is to not fix it. Stop and disable the winvnc4 service. Do NOT use it.
Once its stopped and out of the way, start the VNC server in user mode: Start -> Programs -> RealVNC -> VNC Server (User Mode) -> Run VNC server.
You may want to copy this shortcut on to your desktop.
Now for the why:
Services in Vista run at full privilege and therefore its considered a security risk for them to access the logged in users session. All administrative applications (such as services) can attach only to "Session0".
This means that when winvnc4.exe runs as a service it will serve Session0 - and this is forbidden.
What we did in the instructions above was to make winvnc4.exe run as a normal user - without any special privileges. As a result, winvnc4 connected to the session of the currently logged in user. And since I had (and hopefully so had you) set winvnc4 as an exception in the firewall rules, incoming connections were not blocked and winvnc4 did its job as it should have.
The downside? Cannot use VNC before logging in.
I am considering switching over to UltraVNC - they claim to have a free Vista capable VNC server and mirror driver.
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4 comments:
rdp doesn't work for u ?
Nope. Some applications must be installed at console. It makes no sense to install them in an RDP session.
They do have a /console or /admin switch that gets you a console session ... if u use rdesktop the option is -0 i believe.
As I said: Some applications just will not work inside an RDP session, irrespective of the console or admin flag.
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