Alright so I got VNC working and I can connect to my mandrake box from my windows box, but why do I have to connect to a seperate desktop? When I connect I have to add :1 to my ip, my question is can I connect to the desktop that I can see on the monitor attached to my linux box? Also I have configured my task bar in mandrake and have added shortcuts to things like my download folder. When logging in with tighvnc it always goes back to the way it was before and won't stay how I configured it. Even when I don't use VNC and configure it it always goes back to the way it was before. I run mandrake 9.2

you can't do this with a standard vnc server. the point of the standard servers is to provide exactly this functionality, and to be able to run many many servers at once.... you can do this using an alternative server though, such as krfb, which is a kde based app that will export the existing :0 display and can be viewed by any normal vnc viewer.

Hey thx alot, that worked

i have configured mandrake 10 with desktop sharing but when i try to connect from my win xp box with either tightvnc or real vnc i get an error that states "server closed connection unexpectedly". any ideas?

make sure the firewall is not blocking the port

there is no firewall on. i don't think it is starting up. how can i be sure it is on?

when i try to connect from my windows machine, i see the icons on the bottom of the screen on the linux box move, but nothing happens. any ideas?