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Fast User Switching on Windows XP with VNC?
A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "I have searched the web for links on how to make VNC work with Windows XP fast user switching, and all I have seen is people saying that they cannot get it to work. I would now like to ask the Slashdot community to give it their shot, and see if they cannot find a way to make your standard VNC utilities cooperate with Windows XP fast user switching. For those who don't know what the problem is; when using fast user switching, if you switch users (without logging out) from the first user to log on then VNC comes up with a blank screen. Hopefully someone can come up with a fix for this." It sounds like (and I might be way off base here)Windows isn't necessarily running multiple desktops for its fast user switching, and once the switch occurs from the user running the VNC process, that VNC then somehow loses rights to the desktop. It would be interesting to note if VNC sessions will work once the desktop is switched back. Has anyone else tried getting this to work? Have you run into the same problems, or were you able to find a solution?
I was having the same problem on one of my WindowsXP machines. Upgrading to the latest realvnc seemed to fix it up just fine though.
/. about it..
Maybe you should upgrade your software before you whine to
I concur with this.
As I understand it, Fast User Switching simply keeps other users' processes alive (but suspended) while a user at the console starts up his/her own processes. If you're running vncserver manually, from the Start Menu or as a "Run" item in the Registry, going back to the Welcome Screen will cause vncserver to be suspended. Therefore, vncserver must be run as a service. Most VNC distros make it very easy to do this.
The big problem is the Welcome Screen, which must be enabled in order to use Fast User Switching. We know that VNC works fine with the Explorer shell, but my guess is that the Welcome Screen does something to thwart non-MS remote utilities. It could be a matter of permissions; that everybody (including the vncserver service) must have the same priveleges or be in the same group as the Welcome Screen process.
Personally, I use RemotelyAnywhere and GoToMyPC to access Windows machines over the Internet. If you're doing this only on a private network, then no worries. But if this goes across any public networks like the Internet, I strongly suggest finding a solution that provides more secure authentication at the very least.
Since XP does offer RDP, I'd tend to use RDP before I tried VNC. Is there any reason why n-sAC must use VNC?