Lion broke screen sharing, VNC?

Here is a complete and simple way to fix this problem and get Screen Sharing working for all your devices:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3289794

As you've found out, the solution is short-term. I have a headless Mac Mini which I use as music server and control it using screen sharing from a couple of MBAs. The dumb upgrade to Lion on the server was catastrophic.

I've tried all the suggestions in this thread and others and none have gotten me back to the simplicity of using the ScreenSharingMenulet and one click I had with Snow Leopard. Until now.

I can get ScreenSharing using my MobileMe account on both computers and logging in through Finder, but that's a hassle.

I've tried all sorts of usernames, passwords and permissions for screensharing but none work as they should. After much experimentation, what does work 100% is logging into the remote computer using its Admin name and password.

I got the hint from VNC on my iPad which suggested that Lion likes your Mac ID, not your VNC or screensharing IDs.

Of course there are security issues if someone other than yourself needs access, but it this isn't a problem for me. You will need to have a real admin password. Whilst you can admin your Mac leaving the password blank, ScreenSharing appears to demand one.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much Reubania, re the downgrade of ARD from 3.51 to 3.4. I was racking my brains - repairing permissions, reseting routers, turning off firewalls, blah blah blah.

Most "hack-ish" mac OS fix I've ever really had to do.

My problem is with realvnc when my macbook pro's display is off. Everything works great when the mac's display is on, however once it goes off, realvnc wont work at all...any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I'm freaking going nuts here ever since the day lion was released!!!!! Thanks!

I was talking to a support rep on some other topic. He sighed and said, "Yes, we read the discussions."

He didn't say what I'm about to say here, but I observe that they can't address the issues instantly, they have to prioritize them, and it's not easy, since some of the discussion threads are hard even the participants to untangle.

Looking into my own crystal ball, my prognostication is that 10.7.2 is going to concentrate on iCloud. These other issues would be addressed beginning in 10.7.3. We know they issue updates to one version of the software while the next one is in development, so I'm sure that 10.7.3 is in the early phases. In fact, I suspect that 10.8 is already in the initial design phases.

This worked for me. Not sure why. anyway, I had the same problem, one Mac running Mac OS X 10.6.8 with Screen Sharing activated. Other Mac had 10.6.8 which could connect to Screen Shared Mac without any issues. Upgraded Other Mac to 10.7.1 and Screen Shared Mac was no longer accessible. Would enter same user name and password in Screen Sharing login window and then nothing.

The Solution:

Went to Other Mac running 10.7.1, System Preferences:Energy Saver: Set Computer to Never Sleep, left Display sleep at 1 hour. Quit System Preferences, logged out and back into my user account. Screen Sharing to Screen Shared Mac working again.

I tried kickstarting my iMac and MacBook (both on Lion) and it didn't seem to change anything. I could screen share from work with Back to My Mac, but when I was at home on my own wireless network, I couldn't screen share at all. So irritating. I found this fix, which does seem to work. It involves replacing ARDAgent with an older version, 3.4. This does seem to work, so far. I got the kickstarting ARD instructions from this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3289794?start=0&tstart=0

However, these are the instructions for the ARDAgent modification. Thanks, tchaga!

Instructions by tchaga:

1. Download ARD 3.4 (RemoteDesktopClient.dmg) at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1350, mount it, look inside the package/Contents, copy the Archive.pax.gz to the desktop.

2. Expand the Archive.pax.gz and navigate inside the resulting folder Archive to /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement

3. Navigate to the same folder at the root of your HD (i.e. HD/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement)

4. Copy ARDAgent from your HD/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement to the Desktop and then delete it from the HD/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement folder (you need admin password).

5. Copy ARDAgent from Archive/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement to HD/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement (you need admin password again).

6. Restart

My problem is to access my macbook pro with Lion 10.7.2 using a pc laptop. I can access my macbook pro using another mac but once I use a pc laptop with windows xp. It just gives me the grey screen.

I tried using real vnc and ultra vnc and both resulted in connecting with my macbook pro but with the grey screen.

I tried the above examples except for the downgrade of ARD.

Anyone else try different solutions.

I have some success running the latest Vine VNC server in Mac OS Lion, then use RealVNC client (free download) from Windows XP to connect. Need to set Color to Full Color. Not perfect but works most of the time.

I suggest using other ports than the standard 5900, 5901 etc. It's easy to set port number in Vine VNC Preferences screen.

I have the same issue as @fpalattao. I have been playing around a bit and have a workaround. It seams that the issue relates to user authentication.

If I ensure that there is no user logged into the Mac when I start the VNC client (UltraVNC) on the Windows machine I get the login screen. Through the VNC client I can log in as one of the users and everything works just fine.

The problem described of the grey screen in the VNC client only occurs if I fail to logout when terminating the VNC session or I try to start a new VNC session when there is a user logged into the Mac.

Which leads to a couple of questions.

Is there a VNC viewer available that will manage the OSX user authentication allowing connection and display of screen if a user is already logged in locally to the Mac?

or

Is there a way to configure "Share Desktop" or "Remote Management" on the Mac that will allow any user to share the display once the VNC password is authenticated, even if a user is already logged in locally?

@Grant64 Yes I experienced the gray screen when I'm logged in to my mac. I will try the scenario you described of having no one logged into the mac, this is at least a good workaround. Thanks for that.

The issue I see with 'no being logged in', in order to VNC in, is that if you run full disk encryption then remote-desktop isn't even an option.

This is jus stupid...if Apple didn't want other VNC clients to work with their system they would have built their own and they would not tell you in system preferences for sharing to got to vnc://x.x.x.x.

I'm the person who originally posted this question, and I found the solution. I turned off the feature completely, and turned off everything that supported it. After restarting the computer, I set up Screen Sharing again, and it worked.

There are any number of reasons why this was necessary. Perhaps Lion overwrote the feature with new code on installation, but since it didn't overwrite anything in the user area, the switch in the user area showed "on" while the light in the system area was off.

I should add that I was using full-disk encryption when I did this.

I have done exaclty what you describe and to no avail. I get a grey patterned background. That's it. I am using iSSH on the iPAD, and port forwarding to my laptop. It stopped working with Lion.