If mstsc / remote desktop displays a black screen on connect or in my case on the second connection if run again in quick succession, try the following:
From the windows run line or from the command prompt run:
mstsc /admin /v:ip_of_your_server /span
The /admin command seems to bypass the black screen and allow normal use, the /span command is just used by me as I have multiple monitors and it allows mstsc to use the whole screen area available over both monitors. You can of course omit the /span
