NoMachine is designed to work out-of-the-box on headless machines, nevertheless, in some cases users can experience a black screen when connecting to the remote host. This can be triggered by multiple factors, such as the GPU model, the graphic card driver or the program which uses the GPU for rendering.

In some cases, especially with less recent Windows versions, the black screen occurs also when connecting to a laptop with the lid closed, which is the same case of a headless machine from a technical point of view.

A common solution is to adopt a fake display dongle (also called 'dummy dongle') inserted in the video card port to simulate the presence of a screen and force the system to take full advantage of the GPU as if a real monitor is connected.