Question

This tutorial describes in detail how to setup a remote desktop from Windows to a Mac using putty tools and VNC.

However, my connection is immediately dropped after authentication. (i.e. tunneling and login works, but somehow the VNC session cannot be properly established or displayed). Following other hints I suspect graphics issues but haven't been able to resolve it so far.

Has anyone had this issue?

Or do you know a VNC Viewer that writes helpful log files?

Answer 1

Hi - I had a similar issue with a MAC -> PC connection (but without the PuTTY tools)

What I discovered is that the 'Server Type' needs to be implicitly set to the target system or set to 'Other' - Leaving it as 'Automatic' failed to work when connecting between disparate systems.

I can now connect from my iPhone -> PC or MacBook -> PC (and visa-versa) without issue.

Answer 2

I've had some trouble caused by Leopard's built-in VNC support, which apparently uses non-standard authentication that confuses VNC clients.

The solution was to disable OS X's built-in VNC (Screen Sharing in Preferences) and use Vine VNC instead.

Answer 3

I discovered that it's a color issue. I used tightvnc leaving "use 8-bit color" unchecked and setting encoding to Hextile. Got through just fine over an SSH tunnel.