When connecting to our virtual Windows 2003 Server (SBS 2003 SP2) via a normal RDP session, everything works fine. However, when connecting with /admin to get to the console session, the following happens:
- normal login window,
- after login, screen goes black,
- after about a minute, the screen switches to the default background color (some shade of gray).
Only the background is visible and I cannot do anything, not even Ctrl-Alt-End works.
Since normal (non-console) RDP connections work perfectly fine, I guess that this cannot be a connection issue. I've asked the admin of our hosting provider to have a look at the console of our virtual server (VMWare, AFAIK), and he says that it's all black and it looks like the system has crashed. Obviously, this is not the case: All services (Web, SQL, ...) work, and non-console RDP connections can be established without problems.
The event log contains nothing of relevance (as far as I can tell), and a reboot fixes the problem (until it occurs again after a few days).
I know this is very vague, but I don't know which additional data to provide. Any ideas?
Open your RDP Connection
Click Options
Experience Tab
Uncheck Bitmap Caching
Try to connect again & let me know if it worked for ya! :)