Problem with RealVNC 4.0 on Guests of VMWare ESX

[salvatore.cagliari@pharma.novartis.com]

Dear all

I hope that there is a VNC Developer out there that can help us in solve 
this problem:

We have a Linux Box with VMWare ESX 1.2.1 installed on it. On VMWare we 
created three Windows 2000 Guests and installed RealVNC 4.0 on it.

Now comes the problem: After a while (a few hours), after I connected on 
one of the VM's with the VNCViewer, the Ctrl-Alt-Del Windows is 
disappeared! We are no more able to log in to this machine through VNC nor 
through the VMWare Remote Console (They both connect to the same console). 
The only way is to connect with RDP/Remote Console. But even through this, 
or through a remote shutdown command, it was no more possible to cleanly 
reboot the server. We have to power down the VM to restart it.

After communicating with VMWare about this problem we isolate RealVNC 4.0 
as the cause of this problem. After installing TightVNC 1.2.9 or RealVNC 
3.3.3 the systems behaves normally and we are able to connect to the VM's 
through VNCViewer (4.0) and VMWare Remote Console.

I hope that someone can fix this problem, or at least publish an advisory 
about this. I think it would be better to solve it, isn't it?

We could build a Test VM make tests on it with improved/patched VNC 
versions. Please contact me for this. Thanks.

Best Regards

Salvatore Cagliari
E-Mail: salvatore.cagliari "at" pharma.novartis.com
Bechtle IT-Systemhaus Basel
Switzerland