Windows Server 2019 on ESXi 6.5 U2 - black screens

[dfosbenner]

I have a few Windows Server 2019 VMs.  When connected to the VMs using Remote Desktop, the screen will go black after a period of inactivity, and most times will not come back.  A disconnect and reconnect of Remote Desktop is needed to see the screen again.

ESXI is patched to 11925212.  VM version 13.  VM Tools version 10341.

I'm wondering if anyone else has experience this or is aware of it?  Are there any workarounds?  I haven't figured out a way to make the screen appear again, but sometimes it does come back.  In the VM, the display adapter is VMware SVGA 3D.

[continuum]

I would check the options for energy-saveing in the guests control panel first.
Maybe it is as simple as changing "turn monitor off after X minutes ...."

[a_p_]

Not sure whether it will help in this case, but it may be worth a try to disable "Bitmap caching" in the RDP's advanced connection setting.

André

[dfosbenner]

Thanks for the responses, I tried both settings.  Unfortunately, no improvement.  There was a 10 minute inactivity timeout for the display, I set it to Never.  Also tried turning off the bitmap caching.

[dfosbenner]

My issues with the screen going black seems to be solved with some updates to my client PC's video driver.  I have dual monitors, and before I solved the issue, I discovered I can "wake up" the black screen by dragging it from one monitor to another.  Weird.  But I don't the issue anymore, thankfully.

[Wolken]

Great that you have found the reason. Sometime before it was fixed by installing the latest updates.

[hyvm]

I got this problem after VMware tools installed and guess will fix in next updates, hope to help you .
If you see black screen first reboot. use f8 to boot in safe-mode

Then in Control Panel> Device Manager> expand listed display Adapter and Monitor and Disable both.

This issue is about display and monitor driver in vmware tools.