Resolving Compression Interference Causing a Black Screen After Logging to a VPN When Running a Remote Desktop

When running a remote desktop connection over a VPN tunnel the login succeeds but after that, the only result is a black screen. What could be wrong?

Solution

Try disabling compression on the tunnel.

Remote desktop (RDP) traffic is already compressed, and so the performance gain is minimal when enabling compression. It can sometimes interfere with a PMTU discovery that is essential for RDP connections.