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    Hi,

    This will probably end up being pretty long, so here goes.

    I have Live Mesh installed on two computers, my home desktop and my work laptop, both Vista Home Premium.  Last night, I connected to my work laptop from home using the Live Mesh remote desktop in Internet Explorer 7.  When I finished using my laptop, I locked my laptop from the Start menu (in the Live Mesh window), then I closed the tab in IE7.

    When I arrived at work this morning, I found my laptop screen completely blank except for the mouse cursor, which I was able to move around.  I did a hard shut down of my laptop.  When I turned it back on, Windows appeared to load normally, and I was given the usual Windows login screen.  I entered my password and logged in, but after displaying the welcome screen for awhile, I just got a completely blank screen again (the cursor was still present and I could still move it around).  My laptop was not responsive at all to mouse clicks or to key presses.  Even ctrl+alt+del did not respond.

    I have tried the following:
    1) booting into safe mode (all three types, including safe mode with command prompt)--I get exactly the same results, no response from my computer at all, even when I press ctrl+alt+del.
    2) system restore using a Windows installation disk--I have tried this twice, and it has not fixed the problem; both system restore points were created after I installed Live Mesh but before I remote connected from my home computer last night.  The same thing continues to happen: blanck screen with mouse cursor, responds to mouse movement but nothing else.

    Why do I think this issue is related to Live Mesh?  Well, first, it happened after I used the Live Mesh remote desktop feature to log in to my laptop.  Second, at one point when logging into Windows and seeing the screen go blank, I did see the little blue bar (the one that appears at the top of the screen when you log into a computer remotely using Live Mesh) flicker briefly at the top of my screen.

    Is there anyone who knows enough about the way the Live Mesh remote desktop feature works that they could tell me how to fix this?  I could reinstall Windows, but I would prefer not to, and regardless this seems like a pretty significant bug.

    Thank you,

    Matt
    Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:47 PM

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    Hi Matt,

    I've been working with a number of our developers on ways that we might be able to help out here - but I realize a fair bit of time has gone by, so I don't know if you've taken more drastic action (e.g., reinstalled the OS).  Are you still unable to use this computer?  If you've been (very patiently) waiting to see what options the Live Mesh team might be able to present you: First, I apologize that it has taken so long - your situation is very tricky; second - please send an email, ATTN: Ben, to lmprev@microsoft.com, and I will work with you directly.

    Please let me know, and again, I apologize for the long wait.

    Ben.
    Friday, October 24, 2008 5:30 PM

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    Can you try remoting back into it? Of course, if your Live Mesh install is hosed from the system restores or something, then you're probably pooched. But if you can remote back into it and see the desktop, then it may be some weird display driver thing. Does that machine have VNC on it (or other remote connection software)?

    Maybe if you can remote into it, see if the screen comes alive. If it does, try disconnecting using only the 'X' and NOT locking the device.

    If you do get it back, I'm sure the dev guys would love to see the logs from your machines.
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 4:11 PM
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     Thanks for the suggestion.  Unfortunately, Live Mesh does not show my laptop as being connected.  This isn't too surprising I guess, considering how many times I rebooted the laptop and attempted system restore.  I have no way of knowing what programs, if any, Windows actually loads when I try logging in.  Live Mesh must not be one of them.  I don't have any other remote connection software, so that's not a possibility.  Of course, in retrospect, I should have tried logging in remotely via Live Mesh when I first discovered my laptop in its current state, before rebooting.  But it's hard to overcome that first instinct to reboot whenever one encounters a problem one's computer.

    Thanks,

    Matt
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:28 PM
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    I have the opposite issue. When I connect to my desktop via any other machine I get a blank screen for the desktop. I've tried connecting to the desktop with my laptop next to it to see what is taking place. What I found is Live Mesh unlocks the system and displays the desktop correctly (I find this to be a security issue), but the laptop still shows the screen as blank. If I move the cursor on the laptop I can see it on the desktop screen moving around. If I take control of the mouse on the desktop, the cursor does not move on the laptop letting me know that someone is on the machine (another security issue). 

    I deleted and reinstalled the software to see if that helped (didn't work). So I'm not sure what to do next.

    On the security issues. Why doesn't Live Mesh lock the system like remote desktop would? If connecting into a work machine or an environment were people might have access to the machine, Live Mesh would allow someone to mess with the system without your knowledge.
    • Edited by Minimal Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:38 PM
    Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:35 PM
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    Minimal said:

    I have the opposite issue. When I connect to my desktop via any other machine I get a blank screen for the desktop. I've tried connecting to the desktop with my laptop next to it to see what is taking place. What I found is Live Mesh unlocks the system and displays the desktop correctly (I find this to be a security issue), but the laptop still shows the screen as blank. If I move the cursor on the laptop I can see it on the desktop screen moving around. If I take control of the mouse on the desktop, the cursor does not move on the laptop letting me know that someone is on the machine (another security issue). 

    This is exactly the problem I had. In my case, I had a second remote connection program installed that had put a WinVNC driver in my list of display drivers. When I uninstalled that program, my remote connection started to work properly. You may want to look in Device Manager and have a gander at what's actually installed as Display Drivers (or whatever they're called there).
    Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:51 PM
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    Hi MattGondo,

    Is your work laptop a single monitor system or more than one monitor?

    Thanks!!
    • Proposed as answer by Joiseystud Saturday, October 25, 2008 11:50 PM
    Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:30 PM
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    I have the black screen issue now when remoting from Vista to an XP machine.  XP system is multi-mon.  This used to work last week.  Thanks!
    Saturday, October 18, 2008 3:06 AM
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    Hi,

    I've had a second monitor connected to my laptop in the past, but it was not connected at the time I used the remote connection.

    Thanks,

    Matt
    Sunday, October 19, 2008 5:08 AM
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    Hi Matt,

    I've been working with a number of our developers on ways that we might be able to help out here - but I realize a fair bit of time has gone by, so I don't know if you've taken more drastic action (e.g., reinstalled the OS).  Are you still unable to use this computer?  If you've been (very patiently) waiting to see what options the Live Mesh team might be able to present you: First, I apologize that it has taken so long - your situation is very tricky; second - please send an email, ATTN: Ben, to lmprev@microsoft.com, and I will work with you directly.

    Please let me know, and again, I apologize for the long wait.

    Ben.
    Friday, October 24, 2008 5:30 PM
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    SoundForSound said:

    I have the black screen issue now when remoting from Vista to an XP machine.  XP system is multi-mon.  This used to work last week.  Thanks!

    I had this issue and the following ended up solving my issue:

    1. Shutdown every instance of live mesh on the machine
    2. delete every instance of ppcrlconfig.dll from the machine.
    3. Restart

    Do this for each computer in your mesh.  When I did this I had to reauthenticate to all my Live services (messenger, mesh, etc), but now I can remote into my machines again.

    Thanks to Tim in the live mesh team for his support getting my problem solved.  Hope this helps someone else.

    • Proposed as answer by Joiseystud Saturday, October 25, 2008 11:51 PM
    Saturday, October 25, 2008 11:51 PM
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    Hi Matt,

    I've got this from our developers as an additional something to try:

    You could try booting into VGA mode, then un-install and after that re-install the display drivers.

    The second thing you could try is connecting a secondary monitor and switching the primary mode to it by using the laptop’s display change key (on my laptop it is Fn-F4). The external monitor should have a proper gamma value once connected.


    Please let me know if you are still having issues.

    Thanks,

    Ben.
    Wednesday, October 29, 2008 3:58 PM
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    I am having a similar problem and I have tried all the above solutions mentioned

    I am running live mesh on 2 laptops, dell d620 windows XP and a dell d830 windows XP.

    When trying to use remote desktop on either of the machines a black screen is displayed.

    When moving the mouse i can see on the other machine that the mouse pointer is moving and reactive but just the black screen is showing on the pc that initiated the remote descktop session.

    If anyone can give me some feedback would be most helpfull


    B.
    Tuesday, November 11, 2008 12:18 PM
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    Barak H said:

    I am having a similar problem and I have tried all the above solutions mentioned

    I am running live mesh on 2 laptops, dell d620 windows XP and a dell d830 windows XP.

    When trying to use remote desktop on either of the machines a black screen is displayed.

    When moving the mouse i can see on the other machine that the mouse pointer is moving and reactive but just the black screen is showing on the pc that initiated the remote descktop session.

    If anyone can give me some feedback would be most helpfull


    B.



    Hi,

    Are you logged in to an administrator account on the computer from which you're initiating the Live Mesh Remote Desktop session?  The behavior you're reporting suggests you may be running Live Mesh Remote Desktop in non-admin mode.

    If you are logged in to an admin account, please go ahead and collect logs from both machines and send them to us (instructions are in an Announcement at the top of the forums).

    Thanks,

    Ben.
    Tuesday, November 11, 2008 5:56 PM
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    I had similar problem, think I understand it a little more now. 

    Remote using LM from machine2 to machine1.  Log in to machine1.  (By the way, the ONLY reason I needed to do this was to start LM's file sync feature, because it won't run as a service!)  Note that in my LM remote session, "hide desktop on remote computer" is checked -- and this, I think, is the source of the problem.  Now I "switch users" so that I leave machine1 logged in, but wife/kids can also log in and use it while I'm gone. 

    Later, I go home.  Kick my kids off the computer -- machine1 -- and see that my own user is still logged in.   Click on my icon so I can enter password and resume my desktop.  Screen goes black, except for mouse pointer.  Won't come back no matter what.

    Now what do I do??

    (A few weeks ago, this happened before, but I didn't guess the right answer.  I powered down the machine and restarted, and it came up ok, but then became completely unstabled, rebooted itself many times spontaneously, and I ended up reinstalling windows.  Yuck.)

    I got an idea.  I booted up my laptop (machine2).  Used LM Remote to access Machine1 again.  Screen comes up fine in remote session.  Entered my pword and displayed my own desktop.  Looked over at Machine1, screen still blank.  Now on Machine2, I undo the "hide desktop on remote computer" option, and bingo, Machine1's screen comes back to life.  Now, on Machine2, I tell Machine1 to log out, and I close the remote session.  Finally, I go back to Machine1, login, logout, etc, and all is fine.

    So... I suspect that there's a bug in the LM remote desktop software that causes Machine2 (the target of the remote session) to retain the "hide the desktop" setting, even when the remote session is terminated.

    If anyone needs more detail, I'll be happy to provide. 

    Opsystems:  Machine1 - Vista Home Premium; Machine2 - WinXP.  Both have "automatic updates" running so I assume latest patches/drivers. 



    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 1:26 AM
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    I've had the blank desktop issue on a remote machine after a remote session ended a few times, but have never been able to nail down the cause as it has been quite random. The solution for me, when it happened, has been to log back into the machine remotely and reboot it.

    As to your second paragraph, describing how you have been able to repro the issue, you're right that sync isn't supposed to run unless you are logged into the machine. Some people have, however, reported that the files continue to sync even when the user is not logged in. You could, however, install Live Sync to each user on the machine and have it log in automatically with your LiveID, which should then allow your files to sync no matter who is logged into the machine. It wouldn't sync files if nobody was logged in, though, or at least it isn't supposed to.

    It is possible that the issue is being caused by the hide desktop setting and the remote session timing out rather than being ended gracefully. Have you filed a bug report with logs? It may also be a driver issue on your machine (and others experiencing the problem).

    -steve

    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 12:09 PM
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    Hi Stephen, thanks for the feedback.

    >> It is possible that the issue is being caused by the hide desktop setting and the remote session timing out rather than being ended gracefully. <<

    No, this is not my problem.  I only had the remote session up on Machine2 for a few minutes, and I intentionally "switched user" out of Machine1 and then terminated the remote session.  It did not time out.

    >> Have you filed a bug report with logs? <<

    No, but I did email the details to the support address, and to "Ben" at microsoft who posted to this thread before.  If you point me to the bug report facility, I'll do that, too (at risk of being redundant, but I want to help...)

    >> You could, however, install Live Sync to each user on the machine and have it log in automatically with your LiveID, which should then allow your files to sync no matter who is logged into the machine. <<

    This is a good idea.  Will do that.  It potentially requires some re-work of my local file structures on Machine1, since other users don't have rights to them... but I guess I could put them in "public" ...

    Can't we just get LM to run as as service?  I'm a little dismayed that nobody thought of this, after the number of times people asked for this on FolderShare.  How hard can it be?



    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 4:15 PM
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    You're welcome. If you sent the logs to Ben, then I'm sure that he has filed a bug and gotten the logs to the devs.
    Interesting that you switched users when you were connected. I wonder if that caused the display driver for the Live Mesh remote desktop with the hide desktop setting, to be retained for your profile.

    The suggestion to get sync to run as a service has already been made. If it were made a feature, it would be best as an option as some people wouldn't want it to work that way, though many would. In fact, some people have reported that it will Sync even with nobody logged in already, though it isn't supposed to.

    You can see a partial list of the most common suggestions here and instruction for how to open a new one (or search for one already submitted, but not in this post) here:
     http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/LiveMesh/thread/7ec4f88b-9caa-4b25-aa8d-f7ccc3db63c8

    -steve

    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 5:01 PM
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