Screen Not Drawing on Remote Desktop Client

Question

RDP client is connecting to the server just fine, but only drawing about half of the login screen and then stopping. This is happening on two of my Windows 7 Ultimate boxes, both of which are clean installs. I have three other Windows 7 Ultimate machines that are able to connect just fine, all of these are also clean installs. The only differences that I can find in the setups of the machines is that the ones that don't work properly have multi-core processors and have hardware virtualization support turned on (for XP Mode support in Win 7). I'm using a D-Link WBR-1310 router and having the same issue in both wired and wireless setups. Any help would be awesome. I may even dance.

Answer 1

Lots of variables here..

• Does it happen if you use a crossover ethernet cable to directly connect the two machines, ruling out the existing switch/router and cabling?

• Are there other differences is hardware configuration between the machines? Like video card, ethernet card, etc?

• Have you tried updating the ethernet drivers? Windows 7 drivers are pretty up to date out of the box because the OS is so new, but I've seen really surprising problems from default windows ethernet drivers before.

• Have you tried updating the video drivers? Those are always worth updating because they change so rapidly.

(You could also try using RDP from within a Windows XP VM on the same machine, just for kicks.)

I highly, highly doubt this is because the relevant machines are multi-core. I'd personally go on a driver-updating frenzy myself, based on previous experience.