For those of you that aren’t familiar with Synergy, it is a very essential server/client tool for anyone using multiple computers at their desk. It eliminates the need to have multiple keyboards and mice on your desk, while virtually extending your desktop across Windows, Mac, and Linux environments. You still connect your monitors to the varying computers. I’ve seen seamless Quad-monitor (Three different OSes: WinXP, WinVista with dual monitors, OSX) setups using this program.
This post won’t outline how to use Synergy, but rather just how to take care of the little things that will keep it from being a good experience on Windows Vista/7. I’m writing the rest of this post for those that are already familiar with Synergy, and instructions are targeted at Windows 7 Professional users.
Anyways, I was running into problems with my Synergy client on my home-office setup. I have a laptop docked with a second monitor for my office computer (operating as the Synergy client), and then a single monitor rig in portrait-orientation for my home computer (operating as the Synergy server). I use Display Fusion, which runs as an administrator-level service on my desktop, and I use the multi-monitor taskbar available on the paid version of the software. I was unable to use the Synerg-ized mouse to select a window on that Display Fusion taskbar, and considering that was my 24” monitor where a lot of my work takes place it would be a huge problem if the laptop didn’t have a keyboard. On top of that, every time the client computer would prompt for UAC approval for various things, I would lose the ability to use my G5 mouse and G15 keyboard on my office laptop.
I knew you could auto-elevate privileges, but just hadn’t taken the time to do it. Let’s get that out of the way, as that’s the first thing I noticed in the problems I was having.
Step 1. Open secpol.msc
Step 2. Set UAC Behavior for Administrators to ‘Elevate without prompting’
Next up is configuring Synergy to run as Administrator. I want to note that this was my initial guess as to why it wasn’t allowing me to Auto-start on computer start, however even after forcing it to run as Administrator and installing the Auto-start service, it still wasn’t working. I found out this is due to the way the System user interacts (or rather doesn’t) with the user’s desktop.
Step 3. Run Synergy as Administrator.
Right click on the shortcut for Synergy, and click the Advanced… button. Check the “Run as administrator” box.
Step 4. Auto-start Synergy on Log-in
Step 5. Start Synergy!
Follow these steps on both the server and client if they’re both Windows 7 machines, it’s just that simple.
Tags: Display Fusion, dual monitor, multi-monitor, Synergy, Synergy2, UAC, User Account Control, Windows 7
Tags: Display Fusion, dual monitor, multi-monitor, Synergy, Synergy2, UAC, User Account Control, Windows 7
When not spending time behind a computer screen bringing you his latest blog posts; you might catch him playing video games on his PC; eating/cooking something in the kitchen of his house in Northwest Georgia; watching movies from his Netflix queue; volunteering for the Boy Scouts of America; fueling his wilderness interests by hiking, camping, backpacking, rafting, kayaking; sustaining his established hobbies in Amateur Radio, videography, photography, or music; running his DJ business with his brother as a partner; or hanging out with his friends doing any number of fun activities. 
January 27th, 2010 at 1:30 am
Man, I miss that office. At one point, I did add a 5th monitor to the array running off a Linux box just to have Synergy running across all 3 operating systems. I even added a laptop to make it 6 screens total. I’ll have to check this out when/if I get Win7 at work with multiple computers.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Thanks. This works! Made my day
May 31st, 2010 at 11:45 am
I am using synergy with windows 7 Pro. I can not get my screensaver to work.
It seems to work only if synergy is turned off!
I do not know if this site will email me responses or if I have to look back!
May 31st, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I think I’ve run into that problem too, Heather. The solution might be to make sure the mouse pointer is on the home screen when you leave your computer. What I mean by that is that your mouse pointer will need to be on the monitor of the computer in which the mouse is plugged into; the server.
If that doesn’t work, we probably need to wait on a new version of synergy to be released.
June 23rd, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Ok, so I’ve tried all of those things already, though I saw that the three different synergy applications (synergy.exe, synergyc.exe and synergys.exe being I’m assuming the client and server and the interface/gui) were there and I pre-emptively set the ‘run as admin’ setting for all 3 of those and the shortcut.
Did you ever find a solution that would allow synergy to start AND WORK when the machine starts up? I like you , found the start on machine start mode, which is the way I need to run, wasn’t working. synergyc.exe WAS getting started, as you noted, and running as ‘system’… AND the synergy server on the machine with the mouse and keyboard, was in fact connecting to that client (as per the server status)…. BUT no mouse messages or keyboard messages were being executed on the client machine. I’m assuming that this is the same problem you had.
So your solution may make the ‘start on login’ work.. but that requires one to manually log in with the laptop keyboard… which is the issue…. the laptop is in a docking station under one of the monitors and getting to the keyboard and touchpad is a PITA. I’m thinking it may be this whole ‘secure desktop’ related mess getting in the way… which also blocks the ability- even when Synergy is working, for the ctrl-alt-del message generated from the server side (via ctrl-alt-print or whatever it was) to generate that key sequence on the client Win7 box.
So any ideas on getting ‘start on machine startup’ to work?
A quirk I discovered was that whenever I had it running initially, if I then opened a tool on the win7 box that required elevated privileges, such as the ‘computer -> manage’ tool, once that tool popped up, the remote mouse/keyboard input was dead in the water and I’d have to open the laptop to close the application/tool and then get remote mouse control back. Setting the ‘run as admin’ settings on the exe’s seems to have fixed that.
June 30th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I was unable to get start on machine boot working. I’m hoping the team, or someone that forks the code, will release a new version that works a bit better with windows. I’ve since found ways to fit more than one keyboard on my desk, out of frustration.
Sorry I couldn’t be of further assistance.
August 4th, 2010 at 8:24 am
You wont be able to access secpol on windows 7 premium. Instead, change the value via the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin
Change the value data to “0″
August 24th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Weird, followed all the steps and still cannot get it to work.
it works flawless while my server machine is on test, but when starting synergy nothing works. not cool! nothing compares to synergy imo..
someone get a fix for this!! bah!
August 30th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Interesting discovery… I just figured out that if synergy is setup to “run at startup”, if you go to the synergy service and stop the service, synergy will immediately connect to the client. If you “quit” synergy, then re-open / start synergy, it won’t connect to the client unless you stop the service… I’m thinking I’m going to either setup a bat script and add it to the “run” of the registry or a scheduled task with the following:
net stop “synergy server”
net start “synergy server”
Dunno if it will work, but I’m about to find out!
August 30th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Alright, so stopping the service and restarting it didn’t do anything either… I’ve noticed that after I login to the desktop, the Synergy icon isn’t showing up by the clock… The process “synergys.exe” has to be killed first, then open & synergy before it works…
I did also learn that “synergys –restart” will start the server without opening the GUI and having to click “start” but this didn’t want to work as a task that was set to run at startup. It’s almost like the GUI part has to be run once the desktop has been logged in, but it also wouldn’t run as the task even when I WAS logged in…
I guess i’m going to have to live with the “install at logon” for now
September 29th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
like Sui, Synergy only works for me in test mode.
I am running Synergy+ version 1.3.4 on Windows 7 Pro 32 bit as the client. The server machine is a Mac running 10.6.4 and also running Synergy 1.3.4.
On the mac/server, I see the leaving/entering screen events, but the mouse does not move. Also, the synergy icon does not appear in the system tray, so I have to kill Synergy via the Task Manager.
When I run it in normal mode, it connects to the server and I see screen leaving and enteriing events in the log, but I don’t get mouse control. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.
have tried running synergy app and synergyc binary as admin, with same results.
September 30th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
UPDATE: I have solved this issue, and now am working under Windows 7. My connections work and the Synergy icon is in the System Tray.
further searching of the Synergy help pages lead me to Vista Syn, found here:
http://www.arktronic.com/cms/content/vista-syn
The problem is caused because because starting with Vista, “services [are] unable to interact with the user’s desktop” .
Vista Syn monitors your sytem and restarts synergy in such a way that it can properly interact.
Synergy version 1.4.1 now includes this functionality, but AFAIKT, it is not developed for the Mac yet.
December 12th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
For those looking for an easy solution for Synergy on 7 pre-log-in, just upgrade to Synergy+ 1.4.1 released June 2010. It fixes the issue once and for all, with no right clicking or net starting or secpol-ing.
http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/downloads/list
December 12th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Well, and here’s even more recent info- the fork has been remerged and now official Synergy+ is just Synergy and can be found at http://synergy-foss.org/.
I might also mention that Ctrl+Alt+Pause in place of Ctrl+Alt+Del for sending the magic keystroke from your server to a client doesn’t seem to work with 7 at Server and Client ends. So I’m not sure how to make that happen, but at least the mouse will pop to a newly-restarted 7 machine, so it’s a step in that direction.
December 13th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Thanks for the update Jeremy!
December 23rd, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Weird, followed all the steps and still cannot get it to work. it works flawless while my server machine is on test, but when starting synergy nothing works. not cool! nothing compares to synergy imo.. someone get a fix for this!! bah!
December 24th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Take a look at the link to the new version in the comments above.
January 14th, 2011 at 3:37 am
im running synergy+ version 1.3.5 on windows7 as a server with an ubuntu computer and i keep getting this error on the windows as follows:
2011-01-14t00:31:53 FATAL: cannot open primary screen: unable to open screen
..\cmd\synergys\synergys.ccp,451
January 14th, 2011 at 10:13 am
I have a Windows 7 PC 64 bit and an older PC Windows XP version 2002 32 bit. I downloaded and set up the W7-PC and set up Synergy. It recognises the WXP-PC similarly the WXP-PC also acknowledges the W7-PC as the server. however the version of Synergy are different i.e 64 bit for W7 and 32 bit for XP. I get an error ‘cannot open primary scree:unable to open screen’. Please help!
January 27th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Synergy+ 1.4.1 beta (32 bit) … Running it as client service on Win 7 Pro 64, and it took care of the whole mouse/keyboard lockout when UAC secure desktop prompt has focus.
April 4th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Cheers for this, helped
April 30th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Great tips! I was getting very frustrated with Synergy on Windows 7 Basic but your tips helped a lot! The settings are in slightly different places for Basic but I found them. Thanks a lot man!
July 7th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I have synergy 1.3.6 as a server on my xp/64 desktop and 1.3.6 as a client on my windows 7/64 laptop. My problem is that when a dialog box pops up on the client, synergy no longer directs the mouse/keyboard. I go to the touch pad and either close or minimize the dialog, synergy comes back. Any thoughts are appreciated.
July 12th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
You’re not running the “client” program as administrator. It needs elevated permissions to be able to continue working when elevated permissions are required to work through the dialog.
October 5th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I have a problem with my home windows 7 PC. Is there a strategy to auto sign in to my user accounts if i’ve got a pasword on it?
I would value any support!
October 30th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
I can not get the screen saver to work either. I’ve tried earlier versions and currently at 1.4.4. The server machine (win7) will not go into screen saver mode or shut off the monitor. No matter which screen I leave the mouse on. The second machine (XP) will go into screen saver. The program works great for connecting the two systems, but I get tired of shutting it off every time I leave the computer. I’ve also turned on the sync screen saver option. I’ve tried about every combination of selections that are available.
November 12th, 2011 at 3:48 am
[...] Make synergy work on win7 [...]
March 24th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
As a security professional, I strongly encourage people to NOT follow this advice! While it is true that Windows Vista and 7 are already infested with security hole and vulnerabilities, it does a great disservice to the overall security of your system by allowing UAC to automatically elevate permissions. The simple fact of the matter is, anyone with even a simple coding background could quite easily write a program, that when installed on a system (even in ways of the user not knowing of its installation), it would automatically have the “run with elevated permissions / run as administrator” attribute set. If your computer is set not to request your permission, then there is no user input mechanism to stop potentially malicious programs.
While UAC is not perfect – provides the user with many challenges and is actually not all that secure of a mechanism – I would still advise all users to keep it activated and running as intended – this is unless you are a developer, or conscious enough of computer security to understand the risks and know how to appropriately mitigate them.