I simply modified the power settings to prevent sleep and hibernation and the issue hasn’t happened again. I’m not sure if an incoming RDP connection attempt would wake a physical machine in this state, but sleep isn’t very beneficial to a VM. This tells me that VMware tools hasn’t checked in for a period of time. I only noticed this when I saw a blacked-out screen in the console preview and the lack of a hostname or IP address listed. The issue was that the Windows 10 VM was going to sleep.

These codes were only reported on the Mac RDP client and Windows was more generic:Ĭlearly the message “Make sure the PC is turned on” garnered no attention from a seasoned IT professional like me, but in the end turned out to be relevant. The two error codes I kept getting (0x204 and 0x4) were not helpful and just led me on a wild goose chase. In addition to the 0x204 error, I also saw “Error code: 0x4” numerous times as well. Make sure the PC is turned on and connected to the network, and that remote access is enabled. The exact error message from the Remote Desktop for Mac window is:

The only way to rouse it from this state was to open a direct console window from the vSphere Client, or to reboot the VM. Initially RDP worked fine, but I noticed that after a while I couldn’t connect any more. I had recently deployed a new Windows 10 based VM that would serve as an RDP jump box to access lab resources. TLDR: Modify your power plan to ensure your VM isn’t going to sleep!

Mac remote desktop 0x204