How do I troubleshoot black or white screen issues in WorkSpaces?

Short description

After you authenticate your Amazon WorkSpaces client, connectivity issues might cause a black or white screen to appear. A white screen appears along with a "Disconnected" message when inbound traffic between a WorkSpace in Amazon WorkSpaces and a client device is blocked. A black screen appears when you connect to your WorkSpace and the outbound UDP stream on ports 50002 and 55002 is blocked on the client side.

For best practices on how to set up your WorkSpace, see Security.

Resolution

Check whether you get a black or white screen when you connect to your WorkSpace from a separate computer, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, or internet connection. If the black or white screen doesn't appear, then check whether antivirus software is active in your WorkSpace.

Verify your Workspace's antivirus settings

If antivirus software is active, then verify that all rules and policies in the configuration allow access to the following:

• Required service components
• Required management interface ports

If you still receive a white screen, then troubleshoot the issue on the client computer and in WorkSpaces. If you still see a black screen, then troubleshoot the issue in WorkSpaces.

Troubleshoot white screen issues on the client computer

Verify your version of the Amazon WorkSpaces client

Make sure that you're using the latest version of the Amazon WorkSpaces client.

Verify your local firewall settings

On your local device, make sure that your firewall and other security applications allow outbound streaming protocol traffic on the following required ports:

• UDP port 53
• UDP and TCP port 443
• UDP and TCP port 4172 for a PCoIP WorkSpace
  -or-
  TCP Port 4195 for a DCV (previously known as WSP) WorkSpace

Verify inbound and outbound traffic

Make sure that inbound and outbound streaming protocol traffic is allowed between the WorkSpaces streaming gateways and the client device. Then, validate the networking and access settings on your local device that match your PCoIP gateway servers or DCV gateway servers.

Troubleshoot white and black screen issues in WorkSpaces

Verify your WorkSpace firewall settings

Use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to sign in to your WorkSpace as a user or the domain administrator. Then, make sure that your firewall and security applications allow necessary protocol traffic that flows through your management network interface. If your firewall uses stateless filtering, then open ephemeral ports 49152-65535. If your firewall uses stateful filtering, then the ephemeral ports 50002 and 55002 are open by default.

Verify your WorkSpace traffic settings

Complete the following steps:

1. Find your WorkSpace public IP address.
2. Use RDP to sign in to your WorkSpace IP address from another WorkSpace or from an Amazon EC2 instance in your WorkSpace's subnet.
3. Perform a port test to confirm communication between the client device and a streaming gateway. For instructions, see To verify networking requirements for 3.0+ clients and To verify networking requirements for 1.0+ and 2.0+ clients.

Related information

Why can't I create a WorkSpace in WorkSpaces Personal?

Control traffic to resources using security groups