What to do if your Virtual Desktop is not reachable

There are many reasons why you may not be able to connect to your virtual desktop, the following is the list of the most common ones:

• your virtual desktop is powered off
• your OS has crashed
• your virtual desktop is offline due to the wrong network card settings
• RDP/NX service is not reachable due to misconfigured VPN
• RDP/NX service is not running or giving (internal) error
• misconfiguration of the firewall (or antivirus) running on the virtual desktop
• you are behind a firewall that filters the TCP port needed to connect to RDP/NX
• the node on which your virtual desktop resides is in maintenance (not reachable)

How to check and fix the issue

As your virtual desktop is not reachable through RDP/NX, you need to use a VNC Client to access it and figure out what is the issue.
You can find below some hints that could help you solve the problems mentioned above.

Check if your virtual desktop is powered on

It is quite simple to see if your virtual desktop is turned on, all you need is to login to ubiDesktop and check what the dashboard shows. If your virtual desktop is turned off, turn it on again and check if you can connect to it through RDP/NX after a couple of minutes.

Check if your OS has crashed

If your OS has crashed, then all services won’t work, including RDP/NX. Once you are connected through a VNC Client, you should see a critical error on the screen or a total freeze of the system. At this point, you have no choice than resetting your virtual desktop by pressing the reset button (below the reboot button). Alternatively, you can power your virtual desktop off and on again.
If your OS doesn’t boot anymore, have a look at this article.

Check if your network settings are correct

Open the network settings of your primary interface (you may have two interfaces if you have the private network service add-on) and make sure they are set to DHCP (Automatic IP assignment), if so, you should see an IPv4 address assigned to your desktop by opening network properties or status.

Check if the VPN is interfering with default routing

If you are using a VPN software, you may have replaced the default routing, which involves all services, leading to RDP/NX not being available on the IP address (hostname) we have provided you with. If this is the case, you need to activate the split tunneling to solve the issue, basically in two ways: adding an exception in the VPN client settings, so that RDP/NX won’t be tunneled through the VPN or selecting only the services you need to be tunneled, leaving the remaining on default routing. If your VPN client doesn’t support split tunneling, use another one.

Check if RDP/NX is running properly

Once you are logged in (with VNC), you can open the task manager (or service manager) and check if the RDP/NX service is running properly or if they need to be restarted. If the service doesn’t start anymore, you can investigate the cause with the help of the system logs.
On Windows you may also get an “internal error” or “0x4” error when trying to connect with RDP, in this case a reboot should solve the issue. If you get these errors too often, then you should investigate the cause (conflicting software? Windows updates? corrupted system?) or reinstall the Virtual Desktop.

Check if the firewall or antivirus is blocking RDP/NX

You can temporarily disable the firewall (or antivirus) on your virtual desktop to see if you can connect through RDP/NX again. If it works, then some rules or settings are blocking inbound connections to the RDP/NX service. In this case, you need to change these rules in order to allow such connections and re-enable the firewall (or the antivirus) when you have done. Don’t leave the firewall off!

Check if you are behind a firewall

If, for example, you can’t access your virtual desktop from the office, but you can from home or from your 4G mobile network, it is likely you are behind a firewall that blocks non-standard ports, like the ones we use for RDP/NX services.
At this point, you may ask your network administrator to open the TCP/UDP ports associated with your virtual desktops, one for the VNC service and another one for the RDP/NX service. Alternatively, you may buy a public IPv4 address for your virtual desktop, which lets your RDP/NX service use standard ports (3389 and 4000).

Check if the node is in maintenance or not reachable

When the node (aka server) where your virtual desktop resides is in maintenance or not reachable, you can see a notice stating that on the top of your dashboard. Usually, maintenance lasts less than one hour, and you should have received a notice from us a few days before unless it is urgent (such as hardware failure).

What if you can’t fix the issue

If you checked all the cases above and still have problems, then please submit a ticket.