Issue 3561 has been merged into this issue.

Have you tried leaving a VNC server running on every virtual machine?

We had this issue where Windows would sometimes cause black screens because the machine/desktop
was not in use. Running a VNC service on those machines fixed that problem for us.

Thanks for the suggestion. Our test automation job is triggered remotely from Hudson
actually. With VNC, I have no idea how we can accomplish the tasks done in Hudson (i.e.
check out newly updated files, display the results in Hudson job, multiple Hudson jobs
dependency, etc)

Found a workaround utilising the idea of VNC server. Instead of using VNC server, I
remove the Hudson windows service at the slave node. I create a batch file using command
mode to establish the connection to Hudson.

Content of the sample batch file (assume it's called test.bat) is as follows. c:\my-slave\
is the location of slave.jar.

cd c:\my-slave\
"C:\Program Files"\Java\jre6\bin\java -jar slave.jar -jnlpUrl http://myhudson.com:8080/computer/my_machine_99/slave-agent.jnlp

Place the newly created batch file, test.bat, into the Windows Startup directory to
launch the batch file each time it's logon.

With this solution, I don't get black screenshot anymore.

By the way, the Robot Framework command used is "Capture Screenshot" (not Capture Page
Screenshot). Ideally, Capture Page Screenshot is preferred because the entire page
can be captured but it does not seem to be able to work at all for Internet Explorer.

We've found that the first screenshot taken with a driver often is all black, but subsequent
ones will not be; try taking the screenshot again

The black screen capturing issue I encountered was always black screen being captured
regardless how many times I run the robot framework script. I didn't try capturing
the same screen more than once within the same script though. That could be a potential
workaround too.

Anyway, it has been overcome by my workaround above utilising a batch file to establish
connection to Hudson instead of using windows service.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway as it has given me more workaround ideas.

I have the same problem and I've tried the VNC workaround, but it didn't work for me.
Could you please post your VNC version and settings?

I finally managed to get a workaround for this issue.
In my case, the problem was that I connected to my test servers with Remote Desktop,
which locks the computer after disconnect (I haven't found any way to change this behaviour).
If the test computer is locked, IE screenshots go black.
So I've created a disconnect.bat file with this line:
tscon rdp-tcp#0 /dest:console

Instead of disconnecting from remote desktop, I run disconnect.bat and my test computer
doesn't get locked. Now I have real screenshots :)
I have to credit Nepatsfan from: 
http://forum.soft32.com/windows/stop-Remote-Desktop-locking-host-ftopict360189.html
for give me a hint on this.

I got the same issue on my VMs. I used selenium grid to manage 10 nodes on 10 VMs. 5
of the VMs are windows7 x64 with IE9. The screenshot from these 5 VMs are always black
if it not in use. The selenium version is 2.13. But it worked properly on other 5 VMs
whose OS is windows xp with IE8, even if the VMs are not in use. Do you have schedule
to fix is issue?

Please update to the latest selenium release (2.21 as I write this) and retry. A fix
for just this problem landed relatively recently.

I'm running selenium 2.21 and I've got the same problem. See my workaround: http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=3536#c9

I used your workaround from http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=3536#c9
 . Works nicely for me. Thanks

I see the same issue. I am running selenium-server-standalone-2.23.0.jar on Win7. The
screenshot in IE9 are completely black. This happens intermittently.

Regarding comment 9, it works for me.  I also added this line to the batch file, since
occasionally someone will log into the machine while someone else is on:

tscon rdp-tcp#1 /dest:console

This still happens in webdriver 2.25

Hi all. #4 also works for me with the latest IE 2.29.1 webdriver version.
The question is what is the basic difference between jnlp and windows service for establishing
connection between master and slave that in case of jnlp connection - it works?

I faced the same issue. It's shocking that Chrome update helps! Just update your chrome.

It's configuration problem not selenium.

Just a few notes about screenshots for "headless" configuration:

1. if you use service-based configuration you _need_ to setup it to use local account.
SYSTEM account doesn't have possibility to interact to desktop. 
Be sure that you local account can log in successfully.

2. if you use service-based configuration you _need_ to set "Allow service to interact
with desktop" option enabled for the service. Otherwise service can not interact with
desktop.

3. If you use RDP to run grid2 node please be sure that you session doesn't become
locked. Use something like "tscon SessionID /dest:console" to close the Remote Desktop
session and reconnects the session to the remote computer's console.

4. If you use RDP to run grid2 node please do not disconnect from the Remote Desktop
Connection session, lock the computer or minimize the Remote Desktop window. In such
case Windows switches the Remote Desktop session to the GUI-less mode and does not
draw the GUI. It prevents to take screenshots.
You could change this behaviour by setting:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\RemoteDesktop_SuppressWhenMinimized
= 2
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\RemoteDesktop_SuppressWhenMinimized
= 2
(another keys may be used on x64)
and rebooting after.

Another good solution is to use VNC instead of RDP.

Working as intended from my point.

Also be note that some features of IEDriverServer (proxy at current moment) _can not_
work in service mode.

I have tried  using selenium 2.33 jar and IEDriverServer 2.33 library.

Windows 8, IE 10 screen shot works well
Windows XP IE 8 Screen shot works well
but in Windows 7 IE9 browser screen shot is black, i have tried the work around mentioned
by a.u.savchuk@gmail.com , but it does not works in IE 9 windows7

Have you tried this workaround: https://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=3536#c9
?

I'm running Windows 7 IE9 and getting the black screenshot referenced in #21, without
using remote desktop; however, the browser in question is running an applet.  Is the
applet likely the cause? Or the particular browser I'm using?

for me comment  #20 a.u.savchuk helped. Remote desktop Login was the problem. I rerun
test after disconnecting remote desktop Login it's working fine.

I am running Windows 7 IE8 64 bit, the first 3 screen is fine after that I am getting
black

I am facing this issue in Desktop

"tscon SessionID /dest:console" actually helped to capture proper non-black screenshots,
but I noticed that driver.manage().window().setSize() method does not work in this
case. Any thoughts on this?

win-7x64, IE11, IEDriverServer-2.42

>>but I noticed that driver.manage().window().setSize() method does not work in >>this
case.

Either in chrome

I've used @jaruz tip and it has worked perfectly for my slave nodes (VMs).

Special very thanks!!!!