Take Control (N-able N-central Hardware Acceleration

Last Modified

Fri Nov 08 13:40 GMT 2019

Description

  • The Windows Hardware Acceleration allows Take Control sessions to perform even better, but sometimes, in older/outdated machines or those with the following graphic adapters installed : Matrox G200eh, Matrox G200eW, Matrox G200eR, Matrox G200e (Server Edition), Matrox G200e (ServerEngines), ATi ES 1000 and ATi Rage XL, the effect will be the opposite, and when you connect to a machine the remote session experience will be sluggish and in some cases almost unresponsive. Sometimes this behavior is assumed to be caused by High CPU usage or High Connection Latency but it is an issue with the Windows Hardware Acceleration.

Environment

  • N-able N-central;
  • Take Control;
  • Graphic Adapters:
    • Matrox G200eh;
    • Matrox G200eW;
    • Matrox G200eR;
    • Matrox G200e (Server Edition);
    • Matrox G200e (Server Engines);
    • ATi ES 1000;
    • ATi Rage XL.

Solution

  • The first thing we should do is to identify the exact model of the Graphics Card installed on the machine, since we should apply different performance settings depending on the graphics card model which we can divide into two groups.
  • Group 1:
    • Matrox G200eh
    • ATi ES 1000
    • ATi RAGE XL
  • Group 2:
    • Matrox G200eR
    • Matrox G200e (Server Edition)
    • Matrox G200e (ServerEngines)
  • Group 1
  • For Group 1 Graphics Adapters, we have an automatic system and you can just set: Optimize desktop settings when in session (Enable) and Video Hardware Acceleration while on session: (Auto Detect)
  1. Go to the N-able N-central UI;
  2. Select the Device;
  3. Click on Remote Control Settings;
  4. Click on Take Controlt;
  5. Under Performance Settings, set the following:
    • Optimize desktop settings when in session (Enable);
    • Video Hardware Acceleration while on session: (Set to Disable or Auto-Detect).
    • Limit image capture (Disable)
  6. Save the Settings;
  7. After you set these options, click on Add Task and Select Update Asset Info.
  • Group 2
  1. Go to the N-able N-central UI;
  2. Select the Device;
  3. Click on Remote Control Settings;
  4. Click on Take Control;
  5. Under Performance Settings set the following:
    • Optimize desktop settings when in session (Disable)
    • Video Hardware Acceleration while on session: (Set to Keep the OS default);
    • Limit image capture (Enable)
  6. Save the Settings;
  7. After you set these options, click on Add Task and Select Update Asset Info;
  8. Now access the machine and ensure that the Slider of the Hardware Acceleration is set to Full (directly in Windows) as follows:
    • Note: Do not use RDP aka MSTSC to perform these tasks - Advanced Settings in step 3 below will be grayed out and the page will mention the options cannot be changed when using RDP.
    • These instructions describe how to change the Hardware Acceleration on a Windows Server 2008, but they should be similar for other Windows Systems:
    1. Click Start Menu and open the Control Panel.
    2. Go to Appearance and Personalization and browse to Display.
    3. Click Adjust screen resolution and then click Advanced Settings.
    4. Now browse to Troubleshoot tab and click Change Settings (you will get the UAC prompt here)
    5. After clicking Yes on the UAC prompt, move the slider from None to Full, click OK and test a Take Control Take Control connection to the server.