At the PDC '03, and the time after it, it seemed like Microsoft was really liking ATI. I remember using their cards a long time ago, and it was a very bad experience. So, I've been quite loyal to nVidia for the past while, since they hadn't disappointed majorly... until a few days ago. I just left for a trip, and was counting on using Remote Desktop to get access to VS, Outlook, etc. while on the road.

I connect to my machine from my laptop. User... pass.. applying settings -- window closes. Try again. On another machine. Try with a different user (perhaps the profile was messed up...). All the same. After login, the window closes.

Google group search for “remote desktop closes”... and tada! Are you using nVidia's drivers? Guess what? Their drivers install a service and yep, that service kills remote desktop. Stop the service, and you're set. Well, I'm 3000 miles away from my computer, so that's pretty hard (two firewalls, so I can't connect to SQL Server and run a extended procedure or likewise).

Apparently, this is nothing that new (judging from Google groups), but I don't remember nVidia mentioning this in their release notes. Why can't hardware vendors just make drivers? That's all I need. Drivers and an optional configuration app. Seems like this trend is only getting worse...