connection, but no window - help!

[Danl]

I am boggled.

First of all, I've been using TeamViewer for several years. A real lifesaver. I have several machines, all of which connect to each other. BUT ...

I'm in a situation now where ONE MACHINE won't complete a connection to the others. That is, from that machine (let's call it "A", which is a new model iMac 10.6), I command a TeamViewer connection (to, let's say "B", which happens to be in the same room). It says "connecting to partner", the TeamViewer window closes (all normal), and then ... no window appears showing the screen on B. Nothing at all. It just sits there. I do it again, and TeamViewer on A claims there is already a connection with B. By the way, on B, the pane pops up telling me there is a connection with A. So B thinks that A is looking at it in TeamViewer.

Using machine A, I can't complete a connection with any of the machines (local or remote) that I've been able to connect with in the past. Just like with B.

OK, so I get on B, and command a connection to A. That works perfectly. The window pops up showing the screen on A. Huh?

Now, I tried rebooting A. Same problem. I uninstalled TV on A, and reinstalled TV8. Same problem.

Help! I've never seen this before.

[Danl]

Umm, and all of a sudden, a few hours later. It works. I was beating on this for an hour earlier. Ideas? Reliability-wise, this isn't encouraging. Something probably timed out, but it sure isn't clear what that might have been.

[matt]

I think that the remote machine may have been 'asleep'. I get this quite a bit with Windows machines.

[Danl]

I think that the remote machine may have been 'asleep'. I get this quite a bit with Windows machines.

Thanks. That was going to be my next question. Why does this happen?

I'm a little surprised that TeamViewer doesn't give some sort of connection error in this case. In fact, the way it works is that TeamViewer says "Connecting", and then just sits there. No window appears. In fact, if you command the connection again, it comes up with a message "There is already a connection to this computer! Would you like to establish another connection?"  So as far as TeamViewer is concerned, there IS already a "connection". That doesn't make a lot of sense. In fact, if a window for the remote computer doesn't come up, there is no way to terminate that non-"connection" outside of just closing TeamViewer.

[Danl]

Well, that's not it. I'm talking to the remote machine on the phone while I'm trying to connect, and the remote machine isn't asleep. It's a bit different now, though. Now my TeamViewer window says "Connecting ...", and just sits there until it gets tired of trying (about half a minute), or until I abort. The remote computer *is* listed under "My computers" as being online. So it's online, but it just doesn't want to connect.

[Danl]

OK. Got it working. It's two thousand miles away, so it takes some coordination to troubleshoot it. The target is a PC/W7. That machine was awake and happy, and TeamViewer *appeared* to be open. But I couldn't connect. Clicked once on the TeamViewer menubar (or whatever you call that thingy at the top of the W7 screen) to bring up the TeamViewer window. From that point on, connections worked fine, even after that window was closed.

The symptom, to be more precise, was that on my Mac, TeamViewer would say "Connecting", and go off into never-never land. Now that it's working, it says "Connecting", followed immediately by "Authenticating", followed immediately by the PC/W7 connection window opening. So the issue was that it wasn't authenticating. Somehow, that connection between TeamViewer and the W7 OS got refreshed when the TeamViewer window opened. Weird.