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RDP Disconnects

January 30, 2021 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Hello everyone. I’m excited to tell you about a brand new feature we’ve added to Version 5 of our Premium Management Features product, the Client Side Connection Analyzer. Please watch the video below and read on to learn more about it.

Troubleshooting RDP disconnects for your users becomes super easy with our Client Side Connection Analyzer

Troubleshooting RDP Disconnects Is Tricky

If you’ve worked with RDS for a while, you probably know how difficult it is to troubleshoot RDP disconnections and other connection problems. There’s nothing that is logged on the terminal server side that is particularly helpful, other than being able to checking out latency and RDP loss and retransmission rates with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution.

Windows Updates Can Break MSTSC.EXE

In many cases though, the problem exists on the client computer side, not the server side. The user’s computer may have a Windows update applied that is interfering with Remote Desktop Services, or conversely they may not YET have a critical update installed. Remember the CredSSP problems a few years back, and how that wreaked havoc on terminal server admins worldwide?

Registry Settings Can Break MSTSC.EXE

Users, or their internal IT staff, may also have set registry values on their end that effect how the Windows Terminal Services Client (MSTSC.exe) works, and unless you know what they’ve done, it will be impossible for you to troubleshoot.

Client Side Event Logs Are the Definitive Source Of RDP Disconnect Reasons

Did you know that buried in Windows event logs on a client computer, there are actual error codes that indicate the problem the client encountered when trying to connect, or when it was prematurely disconnected from a session? They are there, but they are hard to find, and you have to translate their numeric codes to actual messages to make sense of them. It’s tricky to say the least.

If you needed to gather up all of this information from the client yourself to troubleshoot your problem, you could easily spend a whole afternoon buried in an RMM tool, exporting event logs, and then trying make sense of the error codes.

This is why we created the Client Side Connection Analyzer – it takes all of the work out of this process.

Use Our Client Side Connection Analyzer to Figure Out The Reasons Behind RDP Connection Problems

Simply send the user you are helping to a special area of our website, where they can download a lightweight tool that will gather up all of this information. They don’t need to install anything on their PC, and it will run with standard user rights.

The Client Side Connection Auditor collects all of the information you need from users about RDP disconnects, registry settings, and applied updates, and helps the user send it back to you for troubleshooting.

Once it gathers everything up and stores it in an encrypted file, it will prompt the user to email that file back to you, or to save it and transmit it to you via a different method.

Troubleshooting RDP Disconnects with the Client Side Connection Analyzer
Review and research all relevant information about RDP Disconnects inside the Client Side Connection Analyzer

Once they’ve sent that data file back to you, you can open it up in the Client Side Connection Analyzer and examine everything of importance, such as disconnect reasons, MSTSC related registry keys, and the installed Update History from their PC. You can also see the build and version of Windows displayed in the Title Bar.

You can research any of the RDP disconnect reasons, Terminal Services Client registry keys, or Windows updates online with a single mouse click. Our tool also includes search functionality and the ability to step through all entries one by one.

Start a Subscription For Only $99.99 Per Named Admin and Technician Per Year

Let’s be frank – time is money. For only $99.99 per named admin or technician per year, you can leverage this powerful tool to clean up your users’ RDP connection problems.

And, since it is part of our powerful Premium Management Features package for RDS, Citrix and WVD, you will also be able to take advantage of our much improved RDP shadowing and Citrix remote assistance features. Not only that, you can delegate common RDS, WVD, and Citrix management tasks to non-administrators.

Again, time is money. Start an annual subscription with us today!

Filed Under: RDP Disconnects Tagged With: mstsc, mstsc disconnect codes, mstsc disconnects, rdp disconnect, rdp disconnections, rdp disconnects

We Fixed Remote Desktop Shadowing (And Some Other Stuff)

May 8, 2019 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

One of the continuous laments that we’ve heard from our customer base, for years now concerns user session shadowing in Remote Desktop Services.  This is a shame, because the internal architecture for shadowing from Windows Server 2012 R2 onwards is pretty amazing.

Using MSTSC to shadow however, eh, not so much.

Let’s Face It: Remote Desktop Shadowing Hasn’t Been a Great Experience For, Well . . . Forever!

The litany of complaints includes problems like:

  • lack of proper shadowing support (zoom out) for multiple monitor sessions
  • dreaded permissions errors
  • the unfortunate requirement for help desk users to be administrators on the terminal servers they want to shadow
  • the inability for Windows 7 systems to initiate shadowing on Server 2012/2016/2019 systems and Windows 8 and 10 workstations.

There was also the small issue that there were no tools for shadowing/remote assistance inside Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure.

As a result, admins and IT staff have been paying an arm and a leg for remote assistance tools to bridge this gap – tools that require heavy install footprints, hundreds or even thousands of dollars per technician per year, and tedious invitation URLs, etc are required to start helping users.

Which Reminds Us: Delegation of Administration Options for Remote Desktop Services Have Been Nonexistent For Way Too Long!

The other need that we hear frequently from our customers is the ability to precisely delegate Remote Desktop Services management permissions to their help desk and front line support staff.  To date, the only real option has been to give help desk staff admin rights on session hosts and connection brokers.  Not an ideal situation from a security, or a “whoops I just rebooted a terminal server with 30 user sessions running line of business apps” perspective.

We tried to resolve some of these issues with our RDSConfig utility, that allowed permissions reassignment for users and groups on session hosts.  However, in larger RDS collections, you need a way to apply those permissions to a huge swath of session hosts all at once – especially as new session hosts are brought online.  Also, to do their jobs, help desk staff need rights to query the Connection Broker to dynamically list RDS collections and the servers that are members of each, plus they should have the ability to read RDS-related performance counters on those session hosts, so they can troubleshoot things like network latency from the client to the server.

So, We Figured Out How To Make Shadowing Much Better AND Created a Wizard To Let You Delegate RDS Management Tasks To Your Help Desk Staff

We call these new tools in the Remote Desktop Commander Client Premium Management Features.  For $99.99 per admin or help desk user per year, all of the aforementioned problems go away.  Want to shadow Server 2012+ systems from Windows 7?  No problem.  Want to monitor multiple user sessions at once in live view in one window?  We do that.  Do you have RDS users with multiple monitors that you haven’t been able to shadow before? Again, we’ve got you covered.

Watch this quick video on YouTube to see these features in action:

Next, download the latest copy of the Remote Desktop Commander Lite client.  Once you install it, you’ll be able to preview the SuperShadow features for 15 days.  The RDS Management Delegation Wizard becomes available after you purchase a subscription from us. 

Once you start your subscription, you’ll immediately be emailed a license file that will unlock all of those features.

SuperShadow

 

**Note 1: With the release of Premium Management Features in Remote Desktop Commander Lite, legacy shadowing support for Windows Server 2008 and legacy shadowing through the MSTSC client were retired. These features remain available in our Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution however.

**Note 2: If you are an existing Remote Desktop Commander Suite customer who would like to test these new Premium Management Features, please install the latest client on a VM or system OTHER than the system running the core Remote Desktop Commander Suite components.

Updated: November 2020.

Filed Under: Software Releases Tagged With: mstsc, multimon shadowing, multiple monitor shadowing, remote desktop shadowing, session shadowing, terminal server shadowing

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Recent Posts

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From the RDPSoft Blog

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