Windows Server 2012

TSAdmin Replacement For Server 2012, 2016, and 2019

July 22, 2020 By Andy Milford 1 Comment

For about 10 years now, I have had the privilege of talking with server-based computing admins worldwide. I’m always discovering the key pain points they must overcome when taking care of day-to-day management tasks, especially if they manage Remote Desktop Services deployments.

One big result of these discussions has been Remote Desktop Commander. This next step in the evolution of our Remote Desktop Services solution set was developed in direct response to the specific pain points I have heard articulated time and time again by RDS admins.

Perhaps unsurprisingly though – and our focus for this article – is that the loss of TSAdmin featured prominently in these discussions.

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Remote Desktop Services Logon Failures

January 24, 2017 By admin Leave a Comment

Have you ever found yourself trying to hunt down the source of logon failures in your Remote Desktop Services farm? It’s trickier than you may have realized.

Our very own Andy Milford, Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Mobility / Remote Desktop Services, just wrote a lengthy article on the topic you can read at his RDS MVP outreach site – http://www.purerds.org.

In the article, he talks about how Group Policy authentication settings like Network Level Authentication and the RDP security layer directly affect how Remote Desktop Services logon failures are recorded in the Security log (Event ID 4625). He also shares tips regarding additional events you can use in a little known event log to correlate where logon failures are actually coming from if the Remote Desktop Session Host is running Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2016.

We look forward to building some of this hard won knowledge into our Remote Desktop Commander product line soon. In the meantime, please enjoy some of Andy’s detailed research on the subject.

Remote Desktop Commander Lite Is Now Free!

July 6, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow Remote Desktop Services and Citrix admins – we hope you’re doing well.

Here at RDPSoft, we’re proud to announce that we’re making Remote Desktop Commander Lite COMPLETELY FREE for everyone in the server based computing community.

Previously priced at $99 per admin, you can now download and use it freely in perpetuity. It’s our gift to you all, and we hope you enjoy it.

It is also our hope that, with the free version of Remote Desktop Commander Lite, Windows Server 2012 RDS admins will no longer have to struggle with Server Manager to perform fundamental, basic tasks like shadowing, viewing connected users, resetting user sessions, terminating hung processes, and sending messages. Now workgroup deployments of Remote Desktop Services or “connection-broker less” deployments can be managed as well!

Moreover, we think that you will enjoy the superset of features found in the latest version of Remote Desktop Commander Lite that are not found in Server Manager or the legacy TSAdmin tool, such as…

The ability to view and monitor RDP latency and connection quality on RDP 8 connections.
The ability to automatically group and sort sessions intelligently by user, computer, activity level, bandwidth consumption, and client OS level.
The ability to add in user-defined, parameterized PowerShell scripts to extend the functionality of Remote Desktop Commander Lite.
The ability to manage RDS connections on any Windows OS level or role, be it Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2016.

Viewing Process Memory Consumption by Grouped User

Move past Server Manager for RDS management, and start using Remote Desktop Commander Lite today.

Review Remote Desktop Commander Lite features, screenshots, and video(s)

Learn more about how Remote Desktop Commander Lite replaces TSAdmin for both legacy Server 2008 and newer Server 2012 RDS deployments.

Download the Remote Desktop Commander Lite free tool

Need personalized support for Remote Desktop Commander Lite? Purchase support incidents here.

Learn more about the full Remote Desktop Commander Suite solution, for session recording, historical reporting on RDS/Citrix farm metrics, license tracking, performance monitoring, and much more. All for only $9 per server monitored per month.

New Remote Desktop Services Hotfixes for Windows Server 2012 R2

January 6, 2016 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

Greetings folks.

The Remote Desktop Services team at Microsoft has just released several new hotfixes for Windows Server 2012 R2 RDS deployments, one of which is pretty significant:

Our Old Friend, the Remote Desktop Licensing Manager.

High Importance Hotfixes

Scenario where too many users signing on can corrupt the RDS Licensing Server database.
Apparently, if there is a high volume surge of many users logging on at the same time, this can corrupt the licensing server DB. Not good!

Lower Importance Hotfixes

Remote Desktop Licensing Manager Tool corrupts reports in large farms.
Not an issue unless the report goes over 4KB in size, so this should only affect larger farms.

Disappearing RemoteApp windows
As a developer, this one fascinates me a bit. It only affects applications that temporarily disable window painting via the WM_SETREDRAW windows message. Still, if you’re having an issue with certain app windows disappearing when hosted via RemoteApp, it’s worth looking into this hotfix.

Remote Desktop Easy Print speed issues
Ahh yes, the continued bane of all RDS/Citrix admins’ existence – printing. After an OS upgrade to Windows Server 2012 R2, a new *feature* can make printing through the Easy Print driver take longer. This hotfix gives you better control over whether printing starts during or after spooling is completed.

That’s all for now.

— Your humble Microsoft RDS MVP

Do you need complete RDS/XenDesktop monitoring & reporting for only $9 per server per month? Review our sample reports and watch demonstration videos here.

RDP On Windows Server 2012: Tracking RDP Bandwidth

August 14, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

In two previous posts during 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2), we disclosed that due to the integration work related to RemoteFX technologies in Windows Server 2012, it was no longer possible to obtain RDP bandwidth information on a session by session basis on Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.

Microsoft Generates Two Hotfixes

Fortunately, after our identification of this bug and follow-on advocacy, Microsoft agreed to generate two Hotfixes to restore this functionality. As a result, the first Hotfix was released and is available for download!

Note well that this first Hotfix only will work on the Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 codebase. At the time of writing this article, a subsequent hotfix was to be released later for the Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 codebase.

The Symptoms . . .

In the article ID, Microsoft explains the symptoms corrected by this hotfix:

When you try to use the WTSQuerySessionInformation Remote Desktop Services API function to obtain information about incoming bytes (WTSIncomingBytes) or outgoing bytes (WTSOutgoingBytes) for a Remote Desktop session on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, the return value is always zero bytes.

Thanks Microsoft Support and Development Teams!

We’d like to give a hearty thanks to the support and development teams at Microsoft that made this happen. Good job, guys!

Remote Desktop Reporter Helps Gain Insight On RDP Bandwidth Consumption With Windows Server 2012

Given this hotfix, consider deploying our Remote Desktop Reporter tool to gain insight on RDP bandwidth consumption in your RDS farm and find out which users are the heaviest consumers.

Updated: October 2020.