Before I start my tale of woe, I just want to point out that I've tried disabling the autotuning feature on Vista machines, but this doesn't fix the problem.
I have a relatively clean desktop machine. The desktop is a host for several virtual PCs, and runs Vista.
Remote desktop connections to the virtual PCs hosted on this desktop are solid, and the connections never drop. The virtual PCs run XP and 2003 Server.
But ... remote desktop connections to the desktop itself stall every 5 minutes. Sometimes the RDP connection drops entirely - other times it's just a matter of waiting 10-20 seconds for the connection to reconnect.
Each time this happens I lose a little more hair.
Even stranger - while a connection to the desktop is stalled, a connection to a virtual PC hosted on the desktop is still working great. I can even ping the host machine and see a 2ms response time.
This behavior leads me to believe that:
I'm hoping SP1 will fix the issue, and do so before I go bald.
Anyone else see similar behavior?
Comments
I'm still experimenting to see if I can make this go away.
I think I need a new machine with hardware blessed by Vista, unfortunately.
Yes, the client machine is a Dell laptop running Vista.
I'm beginning to suspect it may be a driver issue on the laptop - something about the newer RDP version (packet size - gnomes - something) might be causing it to toss?
I have firewall active, with RDP allowed from local subnet only.
After 5-10 mins, the MSTSC window freezes (doesn't say "lost connection" - just freezes) but if I close it I can immediately reconnect just fine.
I use the latest MSTSC (version 6.0.6000.16459, the one with the non-working NLA feature - grr!), and it works flawlessly connecting to the Win2000, Win2003, and WinXP machines I use it with.
The problem only occurs when connecting to 2008 Server (I don't run Vista - I've tried several times to use it, but it just keeps letting me down - much like WinME did back in the day - so I've now removed it from all my client machines and gone back to XP - just like I had to go back to Win98SE back in the day - I had higher hopes for 2008 Server, but so far I'm feeling like it's just Vista with extra features; not liking it much at all).
Hope this helps.
When I set up 2008 Standard I left it copying about 20,000 files (mostly backup/archive data) from the old Win2003 partition to the new 2008 drive. I used Windows explorer to copy the files, mainly because I'm too lazy to type an XCOPY command line, and after a couple of hours (yes, *hours*!!), the copy animation had frozen and the machine was very slow to respond - swapping like crazy. After reboot, things seemed OK and I found only about 15,000 files had been copied - the other 5,000 or so then copied OK. Creepy stuff!!
Well, at least these problems prove 2008 Server and Vista really do share the same codebase!
Hopefully a fix for one will also help the other.
It usually happens after a period of inactivity, 10-20 minutes, but lately it's been happening when the system boots. If I run TCPView when I'm experiencing the problem I see the RD connection is querying the second DNS server in the list and not the local networks DNS server which is in the #1 position.
After several installs I've narrowed the problem down to the VPC Virtual Machine Network Services driver and multiple DNS servers. If I have multiple DNS servers in the list I can fix the problem immediately by disabling the VPC's Virtual Machine Network Services driver or I can avoid the problem altogether by removing the second and third DNS server entries.
I don't experience the RD/Explorer hang problems on XP. It seems that Vista's new network stack and VPC Virtual Machine Drivers don't play well together.
I've also experienced a similar problem with Server 2K3-R2 running exchange in a instance of VPC. If I have multiple DNS servers in the address list then the Exchange Management Shell cannot find the AD server. If I remove the additional DNS servers the problem disappears.
FYI. This is a new Dell system that came with Vista HP installed. The first DNS server entry is the network's local DNS/AD server and the second and third entries where for Open DNS.
I hope this helps someone.
We're expereincing the same problem. Server is a W2k8 Terminal server and Client is XP machine. User walked away or no activity for 5 min then the RDP session was frozen, no error, no message, just freeze. Happened to more than 1 user....sometimes whole office at the same time. And they need to close the session and reconnect, then they can continue to work.
Using Windows 7, I find that the "tunnel" or VPN connection stays connected, but the remote desktop connection is constantly being lost. That is, I get the message that it's trying to reconnect, but it never does. I have to close Remote Desktop AND disconnect my VPN tunnel and start over. Then it connects perfectly until the next failure (I typically get approx 5 to 30 min of uninterrrupted connect time.)
Did any of you who commented above find an answer understandable to Dummies?? :) Thanks.
Using Windows 7, I find that the "tunnel" or VPN connection stays connected, but the remote desktop connection is constantly being lost. That is, I get the message that it's trying to reconnect, but it never does. I have to close Remote Desktop AND disconnect my VPN tunnel and start over. Then it connects perfectly until the next failure (I typically get approx 5 to 30 min of uninterrrupted connect time.)
Did any of you who commented above find an answer understandable to Dummies?? :) Thanks.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers