Xen, Windows and VNC

Connecting to a Xen DomU directly from Windows using a VNC client can sometimes be a pain. Most Windows VNC clients dislike the protocol that Xen uses for VNC and continually fail, or appear to work but actually aren’t.

In the aces of installing LinuxMCE recently, I tried in vain for yonks to get the installer screen loading up in my VNC client, thinking it was a problem with the Xen guest. Turned out VNC simply wasn’t talking properly!

Using TightVNC Viewer you have to go into Options and change the preferred encoding to RAW.

Bob’s your uncle!

I hope this saves someone a few minutes!