VNC connection from Windows to Mac drops immediately

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?

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

I had the same issue using Remmina. After setting the Color depth to High color (16 bit), the connection works fine.

Full instructions:

1) Activate screen sharing on Mac OS X:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -configure -access -on -configure -allowAccessFor -allUsers -configure -restart -agent -privs -all

2) Connect with remmina, using Mac username and password, and Color depth High color (16 bit)

3) Stop Screen Sharing with:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -deactivate -configure -access -off

Reference: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/30239/57296 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/73919/57296