Error when opening ParaView via Remote Desktop Connection

Like many, I am working from home a fair bit. For me this means connecting to my desktop work computer via Remote Desktop Connection on my home computer. Paraview doesn’t seem to like that.

Running ParaView directly on my work computer works perfectly. However, when I attempt to open ParaView through remote desktop I get this error message: “LoadLibrary Failed with error 87: The parameter is incorrect.”

The interesting thing is that if I open ParaView on my work computer (and leave it open), it continues to work fine when I remote into it from home. So there’s no actual problem running it and rendering remotely; there’s just a problem opening it remotely. After it is closed for any reason, it gives the error message when I try to reopen it remotely. It seems there’s some kind of test or check that happens as the program is opening that throws a flag from a perceived problem. If that could be bypassed or disabled it would probably work just fine. If I want to use it at home when it’s not open I then have to drive 45 mins to open it at work, leave it open, and then come home and continue using it… which defeats the purpose of working from home.

I’ve googled and tried various things with video adapters etc but have come up short. Obviously its a remote desktop issue, and likely a video adapter issue, but I havent figure out how to solve it. Maybe there’s a way to change ParaView so that it doenst keep it from opening after that initial check.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan

Hello Nathan,

What remote desktop software do you use? Is it Windows to Windows?

I think this is a Windows RDP issue. I believe RDP does not support OpenGL beyond 1. You’ll need to run with Mesa when using ParaView remotely. Mathieu Westphal wrote how to get this to work in 2020. It may work for you.

https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-run-paraview-including-the-binary-release-using-mesa-on-windows/4321

Good luck,
Patrick

Thanks. I’ll check out that thread.

It is Windows to Windows using VMware Horizon Client. Your response reminded me of something important I forgot to mention. It was working perfectly before but just randomly started this issue a few days.