Windows Remote Desktop (mstsc) can't connect: quits unexpectedly

I'm in London and I've been trying to establish a remote connection to another machine which I use for development.

I needed to access it so that I could work remotely while away, but when connecting using Remote Desktop (mstsc on the command line) I could see the log in dialog and enter my details, but as soon as I pressed 'OK' it just quit. No error messages, nothing!

I tried using the IP address, and the fully qualified hostname but no cigar. What drove me even more mad was that I previously tested that I could connect to the machine when the laptop and desktop were physically right next to each other.

But as soon as I moved away from the same location, I found I was unable to connect.

I thought it was something to do with trying to connect to it from another IP subnet, but I managed to connect remotely to a third machine which was on the same subnet, and from there I still could not connect to the target machine.

I thought it was odd that I could connect to one machine, but not the other. So I did a search of the Microsoft support website, and it turns out that the problem is a dodgy NVIDIA display driver! Apparently it doesn't like people connecting remotely, so it just decides to kill the connection with no error and no warning.

See this support article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886212/en-us which suggests rolling back your NVIDIA driver.

But in the short term, if you have an NVIDIA graphics card and if this problem has been driving you mad and you are unable to roll the driver back, hopefully this will help. I think the problem is due to the multiple monitor functionality that comes with the NVIDIA driver software. So if you have that enabled, then this might help.

My resolution was:

- Get the machine restarted
- It *should* let you log in since there is no session to restore
- Disable the nView functionality

For me, that meant Bob was my Uncle. But it remains to be seen if I can disconnect and then reconnect to my session on the remote PC.