Terminal Servers not working

[cmptrnerd]

I have a windows 2000 server running service pack 4 with terminal server in remote administration mode. When we try to connect up with the RDP client all we get is a black screen with no logon prompt that times out after a while.

Mark

 

[MattWray]

This sounds like it might be it...

We had a server at work that whenever you tried to access the console or TS into the server it just displays a black screen. You could do a ctrl-alt-del and if you tabbed just right you could log into the server. The server then functioned correctly. We finally got around to dealing with it the other day. I did the standard Google searches and checked out Microsoft's knowledgebase but had no luck. I finally broke down and called Microsoft. Turns out this is a known issue, but not enough people have called in for it to become a knowledgebase article.

The cause of this issue is because the colors for the Default user are all set to black (0 0 0). This was caused by the system drive running out of space. The disk space issue was caused by a Computer Associates product that went out of control and filled up the drive. To correct the issue I had to export the "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors" key from a working server and import it into the broken server. Once I changed the registry entries the server started displaying the login screen just like you would expect.

good luck


Thanks,

Matt Wray

GFH

http://www.sss-steel.com

 

[cmptrnerd]

The problem we have is that the console works fine only the terminal server connection has a black screen. I am able to login but I still don't get anything but a black screen. I can see that I'm logged in from the terminal server manager on the server console screen and the importing of the registry colors didn't work.



Mark

 

[MattWray]

Found a couple other things...

Quick Tips for checking a common Terminal Services/Remote Desktop Internet connection problem

If you can connect to a Terminal Server but get the "black screen", this may be your problem.

Black hole routers may dump packets above a certain size when you are trying to traverse a path to a server. Here's a method for looking for a black hole router, and figuring out the size of the "bottleneck".

1. Try a normal ping of the server; this sends a "minimal" packet of 32 bytes.

2. If the remote system drops all ping requests (possible for some secured systems), do a traceroute, and start your ping with the next-to-last system. Make sure you have a "plain" ping working.

3. Now try pinging with fixed-size packets that are set to not fragment. Normally the largest size possible is 1472 bytes. This is done like this:
ping -l -n
For example, to ping 169.3.65.254 with a packetsize of 1472, do this:

ping -l 1472 -n 169.3.65.254

4. If the largest packet is rejected, determine size by bisection; drop to about 736; if that works, try about 1100 or so, until you find about the largest size that will work.

5. If this does indeed work, you have two possible resolutions. One is to try finding the black hole and getting the administrators of the system to fix it. This requires doing a traceroute to the Terminal Server and then checking the intervening systems for fragmentation as we did here. More realistically, you may want to set the Terminal Server to use packets small enough to get through.
Note that you should not use the Microsoft Windows 2000 TCP/IP Protocols and Services Technical Reference to set the MTU key location - it's wrong. Instead, see the appropriate article before and look up "MTU" in it.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=KB;EN-US;Q120642

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;Q314053

Another question, this happens from any machine your try from? I saw a couple other references where it pointed to the client side....


Matt Wray

http://www.sss-steel.com

 

[cmptrnerd]

This happens from several diffrent machines and happens on workstations connected at the same office on the same lan it even happens when you remote desktop to the server using the server.



Mark