VNC Screen Sharing Freezes Permanently whenever I switch users...

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VNC Screen Sharing Freezes Permanently whenever I switch users...

Whenever I switch users remotely using 'Back To My Mac' mini the Screen Sharing freezes permanently and I have to physically reboot my Mac mini in order to be able to remotely connect to it once again. It's odd since on that Mac mini all accounts have MobileMe access with Back To My Mac enabled, along with Screen Sharing and File Sharing checked. I have a similar setup for my iMac but that one doesn't have a problem when I remotely switch user accounts, just the Mac mini has this problem. In fact, I also enabled VNC access via a password and that also works fine on any account on the iMac, but once again, with the Mac mini, once I switch out of the auto-login account, Screen Sharing freezes and I can't get back into the computer until I physically reboot it. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Black MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.2), Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHZ

Posted on Jan 6, 2010 4:40 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 11, 2010 7:49 AM in response to JFraser

I have got the same exact problem.

Does anybody else have seen this before?

Thanks,
Luca

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Answer 2

JFraser Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 21, 2010 2:36 PM in response to JFraser

No one seems to know a viable solution.

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Answer 3

zirinisp

Level 1

0 points

Mar 7, 2010 6:17 AM in response to JFraser

I have the same problem too. I tried various solutions that i found on the net without any luck

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Answer 4

Mar 23, 2010 5:00 PM in response to JFraser

I haven't used Back To My Mac, but I use VNC and have noticed situations where the VNC server can freeze. While I don't have a solution for you, these steps might help so you don't have to reboot while you're looking for the solution. When the VNC server freezes, I start a terminal session (which can be done remotely using ssh if you have remote login enabled).

From the terminal command-line, type:

ps x | grep VNC

This will display process information for the VNC server. The first number will be the process id. Use that number in the following command:

kill pid

where 'pid' is the actual process id, like this:

kill 116

For those reading who are not very familiar with this, do not literally type 'kill pid' or 'kill 116'. You need to use the number displayed from the 'ps' command I displayed above.

This sends a kill signal to the VNC server, which basically resets it. I am able to connect with screen sharing once again after doing these steps. Hopefully it will work as well for you.

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