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Strange Screen, Keyboard, Mouse Behaviors When Connected to a VM

Note

This article covers a few of the strange keyboard, video or mouse behaviors that can affect graphical (RDP) connections to your Cyber Range virtual machine(s), and then provides you with a list of three common fixes or workarounds should you experience them.

Why is My VM Exhibiting Strange Behaviors?

Has your mouse been moving on its own and your keyboard typing by itself, or do you encounter a black screen when attempting to start an exercise environment? Please rest assured that you have not been hacked. While this issue rarely happens to users of the U.S. Cyber Range, it can sometimes occur. Some of these annoyances are related to known RDP library issues and others related to VM connection issues. However, the fixes are usually simple and quick. Please continue reading below for more information.

Troubleshooting VM Environmenets

  1. Refresh Your Browser: For any issues, always try performing a browser refresh first, as it is the quickest fix and resolves most RDP/graphical connection problems. Refreshing the browser forces the JavaScript RDP web client to re-establish a connection to the Cyber Range VM, resetting the RDP connection. To do this, press the refresh icon next to your browser or use a keyboard shortcut (F5 or Ctrl + R).

  2. Restart Your Exercise Environment: If the browser refresh does not work, restarting your exercise environment may help. However, this fix is more disruptive, as any open work will be closed when your VM reboots. Use the Cyber Range “Stop” and “Start” (power on/off) icons next to your VM. Please refer to the section titled How to Perform an Exercise Environment Soft Restart for more details.

  3. Reset, Wipe, & Reprovision Your Exercise Environment: If restarting your environment does not resolve the issue, you may need to reset your specific VM environment. This is a more extreme measure that will erase and rebuild your VM environment to its original state, causing all saved work to be lost. This method is also useful if the VM has been destructively altered in a way that makes it unusable. Please refer to the section titled How to Reinstall an Exercise Environment to learn more about resetting exercise environments.

    Note:

    Only TAs and Instructors can perform exercise environment resets. If you are a student, please reach out to your instructor for further assistance.

Have a Question? Contact Support

Important

Students, please reach out to your instructor who can submit a ticket to our Support Team on your behalf.

We're here to help you. If you still have questions after reviewing the information above, please feel free to submit a ticket with our Support Team and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.