I was presented with a Dell Optiplex 960, which had some video problems and would not allow Windows Remote Desktop connections. My concern was heightened because this machine was built off an image that I was sure worked properly.
The screen would exhibit "snow-like" conditions, like you would see on old TV sets using "rabbit-ears" or a screen that had some electrical interference. Also, the problem would only appear intermittently. There nothing specific that I could attribute to its cause. This, obviously, would be a clear case of a video problem.
The other problem involved Windows Remote Desktop. When I would try to connect to the machine via Remote Desktop (from a Windows machine and a Mac running the Windows Remote Desktop client), the connection would attempt to connect. However, the Optiplex machine would freeze and the remote connection would never connect beyond a blue screen.
I was pondering whether the problems could be related or if they were separate issues that were only related by sheer coincidence. I was hovering around possible video and/or memory problems preventing the Remote Desktop connection. I attempted to tackle the Remote Desktop problem first, hoping that it would also solve the video problem at the same time. A search on Remote Desktop freezes yielded several scenarios of similar problems, including freezes that occurred only when there was a user already logged in, but nothing that gave me a workable solution.
I turned my attention to the video problem. After some poking around and searching for answers online, I finally came to the solution of a updated video driver for the nVidia Quadro 420 video card. The driver was posted on the Dell website and, even more coincidental, the date of the posted driver was yesterday. This problem seemed to have a known solution. After installing the driver and restarting several times (by no means a thorough test) I assumed that the problem was resolved.
Going back to the Remote Desktop problem, I tested to see if the updated video driver now allowed the Remote Desktop connection to work. No dice. Remote Desktop would still freeze the session on the Optiplex 960 and the remote session still wouldn't connect. After more searching, I finally went back to the Dell site to search more current solutions. This is when I found this:
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19271963/19476610.aspx#19476610
Basically, we are putting in a new registry entry in the following location:
HKeyLocalMachine > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager > Memory Management
Right click to add a DWORD and call it: SessionImageSize
The value of the entry is in hexadecimal. The thread I referenced above used a value of 20. However, I checked another machine that didn't have any problems and found a value of 30. For now, just use 20. This could be a place to adjust if there are further problems.
Hope this helps someone. Happy computing.
2 comments:
Many thanks for the post! That cure fixed a problem I was fighting with a new Dell T7400.
Glad it worked.
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