Troubleshooting artifacts in a PCoIP Session

Problem

During a PCoIP Session artifacts are appearing on the screen. The artifacts may stay or slowly disappear.

Cause and Resolution

There are may reasons artifacts may appear on the screen. Some may be source issues such as the application or operating system incorrectly drawing the screen. Others are PCoIP related due to network or other issues.

Determine if the source is host machine or PCoIP

You can do a simple test to determine if a display issue or imaging artifact could be related to PCoIP protocol or is an imaging issue on the host machine (host virtual desktop, or remote workstation host).

1. Do a print screen on the client.

2. See if the imaging artifact/issue appears in the print screen image.

This test works for PCoIP Zero Cients and PCoIP Software Clients (make sure the View window is active to ensure the key is passed to the remote machine).

The print screen shows the contents of the display frame buffer (video memory where the display image is stored) for the host. If the source display image has the artifacts, the PCoIP protocol is not involved. However, if the source display does not show the imaging issue, the PCoIP protocol is involved.  

If it's a host imaging issue on a PCoIP Standard Agent machine:

• Disable any hardware acceleration associated with the application.
• Test the application on a non-virtual machine. If the issue is reproduce contact the application vendor.
• Open a ticket with Teradici Global Support Services. Where possible, supply the screen shot showing the artifact and a picture of the screen in addition to the logs to speed up troubleshooting.

If it's a host imaging issue on a PCoIP Graphics Agent machine:

• Test the application on a non-virtual machine. If the issue is reproduce contact the application vendor.
• Ensure the GPU driver is the correct version for the virtualisation platform. Some are cloud vendor supplied.
• Ensure the GPU driver is the version stated in the system requirements section of the Administrators' guide for the PCoIP Graphics Agent release.
• Open a ticket with Teradici Global Support Services. Where possible, supply the screen shot showing the artifact and a picture of the screen in addition to the logs to speed up troubleshooting.

If it's a host imaging issue on a computer with a PCoIP Remote Workstation Card (host card) installed: 

• Check video cables between GPU and PCoIP host card.
• Test alternate GPU (or replace GPU).
• Check GPU configuration, driver updates, etc. Contact the GPU vendor.

Issue appears to be PCoIP

Network conditions

PCoIP artifacts are often caused by poor network conditions. Rarely is it encode/decode process. 

Artifacts disappear when the screen is static

If the screen is left static for a period of time and the artifacts clear up, it is possibly network conditions causing packet loss or low bandwidth and image compression. When an image is static, PCoIP will re-transmit any lost data and build the qualify of the image up to perceptually lossless. This KB provides guide for checking network conditions. How to identify network issues in PCoIP Logs

Artifacts do not clear up over time 

If the artifacts do not clear up over time try enabling build to lossless. If this fixes the issue also try setting the minimum and maximum initial image quality to 100.

Contact Teradici Global Support Services

If the artifacts still persist after following the troubleshooting steps open an ticket with Teradici Glocal Support Services. To expedite the troubleshooting please provide the following:

• The PCoIP Agent log files or PCoIP Remote Workstation Card logs
• Screen capture of the issue
• Video or Picture of the issue occuring on the screen. You can use your mobile phone to capture this
• Time and date the issue occurred
• Steps to reproduce the issue
• Content to reproduce the issue if possible.