Mac Mini shares accessible but screen sharing stops working

Hi

There appears to be a problem with some (perhaps all?) VNC Viewers installed on PCs? I've seen this with TightVNC and RealVNC. What happens is a PC user will remote in, do whatever it is they want to do and then close the session. Unfortunately the session is still open server side and others wishing to do the same find they can't until they reboot the server.

Ironically this only affects PC users. Mac users are not affected. This is slightly different behaviour to what you're describing.

Strangely telnetting port 5900 is successful.

Solutions? Might be 'fixed' in the next update or perhaps 10.8? In the meantime use ARD or the mac OS to remotely manage the server.

HTH?

Tont

Did you ever find a fix for this?

Another user posted the fix, which is a bizarre one, but try this:

Go to System Prefs>MobileMe

Click "Sign Out" (you're probably perma-signed-in)

Bingo, your screen sharing should work again.

Kirby

I had the same problem; and signing out of MobileMe worked for me.

Perhaps Screen Sharing prefers to use the now-defunct MobileMe for authentication if you're signed in (in preference to local login credentials on the VNC server machine)? This seems to have been a relatively recent change--I'm thinking maybe it's related to Apple's MobileMe decommissioning?

Jim

Where 10.6.8 is concerned, this worked but I don't know how 10.8 users are affected. I read in another forum that on August 1 or 2 Apple turned off the last piece of MobileMe, which apparently is what's causing the screen sharing problem. How being logged in to MobileMe affects my local ability to screen share? I will never understand. But if you hit a genius bar for help, or call apple support, do let them know about the signing out of MobileMe connection for other users: it might point them I the right direction.

Kirby