Windows Live Mail displays incorrectly in a Remote Desktop session?

I'm having a problem with Windows Live Mail not displaying properly when I use Remote Desktop to connect to my home PC. The problem only happens if someone is also logged into the machine locally. Parts of the Windows Live Messenger window will display just fine (like the overhead tool bars and email preview window), but other window panes like the folder list and email list do not render properly.

For example, if you have a Word document open and you switch back to Windows Live Messenger, you will still see the Word document "bleed" through in the window panes that do not repaint. Windows Live Messenger is still functional and you can click on emails in the email list, but you have to guess where to click since the window pane did not paint properly.

Normally Windows 7 does not support concurrent sessions like this, but it's not hard to enable that feature. I've never had a display problem with any other application when using concurrent sessions.

The display issue goes away as soon as the local user logs out or presses Windows-L to lock their session.

Solution 1:

I had the same problem. After a long time, I found the following solution:

Change the Theme to "Windows Classic" on the User logged on the Server.

The problem is in the Windows Basic or Aero themes which are incompatible with Windows Live mail over RDP, so just use Windows Classic theme on Server Username and Problem is Solved!!

Solution 2:

This is down to Windows Live Mail heavily using WPF in places, and WPF uses hardware acceleration which can be buggy in some situations.

After doing some research, I have come up with the following solutions:

On all machines, attempt to update the .NET Framework to version 3.5, and update Remote Desktop to the latest version. WPF and remoting has changed quite a bit since it first came out - If you are using Windows XP to remote in, this may fix it.

This does work with Windows 7 Pro. Remote desktop in, then Cntl+Shft+Esc to log off other users (i.e. on the Console), then start Windows Live Mail.

If this doesn't fix it, I would be interested to know how you enabled the multi user remote desktop - it is possible that this causes the problem, but, I don't know for sure.

All I can suggest from this point is to attempt an alternate to Remote Desktop such as Teamviewer or VNC.