Using the VNC server in OS X

[bug]

I've never been able to get the VNC server in OS X to work well.

In 10.4 (and previous) it would periodically just start using 100% of the cpu, and in 10.5 its really slow when accessed from a PC and it seems to just stop responding periodically and I have to ssh in and kill the process.

Note that if I access it using another mac (in 10.5 anyway) things work fine, it is nice and fast and doesn't crash.

If I access using tightVNC from a PC it is amazingly slow (I've seemingly tried every permutation of the encoding options) and it causes the server to crash on a very regular basis.

For 10.4 I eventually just started using Vine Server which works very well in all circumstances, but if I could get it to work I'd like to use the one built into 10.5 because, other than it sucking when being used from a PC, it is integrated so nicely and works really well when accessed from macs.

We experience this on multiple servers in our home - our G5 and our Intel iMac. Both running 10.5.2 (in fact it seems worse now than it was with 10.5.0).

Anyone have any tips? I was hoping 10.5.2 would fix this, but now that I've lost hope for that I may just go back to using Vine (which is annoying because it doesn't work quite as well with the "Share screen" option in Finder).

Thanks!

[electroman]

I am having a simillar problem to yours, have you had any luck yet? I have been trying to connect to Leopard's built in VNC server, via a PC. I have tried a few VNC clients but all atempt to connect and fail with some error one being[incompatible version].

Thanks

[Namnorkimo]

Did you ever try the "Teamviewer"? I had similar problems with the VNC before, but the Teamviewer works very well for me.

[danmp08]

To connect from a PC, you have to specify a password in the computer settings pop-up of the screen sharing panel in the sharing panel of Leopard's system preferences. TightVNC seems to work the best for me - or UltraVNC though you need to use the same options of TightVNC (RealVNC never works) - never super fast but adequate. It will be faster if you set your OSX monitor preferences to thousands of colors rather than millions, however in TightVNC's options, set the colors to full. True than Vine works better in Tiger.

[mathcolo]

If you're having trouble with the Built-in VNC server you can always try an alternative:

http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine_server/

[bug]

Yeah, I was using vine. I just like using the built in one - Vine (at the time, maybe it supports it now) didn't support the "share screen" option in finder and wouldn't do VNC for multiple screens (from what I remember).

The built in one works OKish now. It dies once in a while when accessed from a PC using tight VNC and I have to ssh in and kill the process, but its good enough.

...just funny that mac to mac it works better than any other VNC setup I've used but PC to mac it aint so hot. ...in theory you'd think it would be pretty standard, it just being VNC and all. Oh well.