I've been in my new role as a System Administrator for about two months now, and while most things are going well, the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environment is giving me a lot of headaches. Over the years, there have been a variety of recurring issues, including user profile loading errors, random black screens upon connection, and frustratingly inconsistent disconnects—especially with thin clients dropping their RDP sessions after just two minutes.
Despite pouring a lot of time into troubleshooting, such as tweaking Group Policy settings, reviewing event logs extensively, and even analyzing network traffic with Wireshark, I haven't found a definitive solution. The setup is a Windows Server 2022 RDS environment, supporting under 1000 users, and I'm hoping to learn from your experiences. What are your thoughts or suggestions?
5 Answers
It sounds like you've done a lot already! If you have access to a networking team, it might be worthwhile to check the firewall logs. Have you ruled out SSL inspection issues? Those can also cause strange disconnects.
What user profile solution are you using? Is it User Profile Disks (UPD) or FSLogix? I've had a tough time with FSLogix on Windows Server 2022; during testing, I faced a lot of black screen issues and VHDX files failing to generate. It might be worth considering as a potential cause, along with checking for any permission issues with the profile folders.
For testing, try seeing if the RDP issues happen only when connecting from outside the domain to inside. If you can, perform test sessions from two machines within the same domain. If problems persist, it might indicate group policy or firewall rules at play.
I've encountered similar problems that were traced back to registry bloat due to constant user logins. It might take forever to access certain registry sections, indicating it’s overloaded. Consider a cleanup routine if you haven't already, as it helped my environment, at least temporarily.
Sometimes, bad print drivers can mess up Remote Desktop sessions. If the user profiles are trying to access printers and there's a corrupt driver, it might crash the connection. I suggest checking the printer logs in the Event Viewer for any signs of trouble.
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