After KB5122882 installed overnight on a Windows Server 2022 RDS host, existing Remote Desktop sessions continued working, but new connections authenticated and then hung. Task Manager also became unresponsive even though CPU, memory, and disk usage looked normal, and the Remote Desktop Services service was still running. Rebooting temporarily restored access, but the problem returned about an hour later. Uninstalling the update rolled the server back from build 20348.5622 to 20348.5499, and RDP has worked normally since. Has anyone else seen this behavior on Server 2016, 2019, 2022, or 2025?
3 Answers
The timing and the behavior strongly point to the update: existing sessions remain active, while new RDP connections get through authentication and then stall. Before treating it as a universal issue, check the server event logs and test the update on a separate host. A staged rollout is safer than installing it directly on production RDS servers.
Another possibility is a mismatch in Kerberos encryption support between the RDS server and the domain controllers. If the update changes the encryption protocols on one side but not the other, the tickets issued by the domain controllers may not match what the RDS server accepts. Make sure the relevant updates and security settings are consistent across the RDS hosts and domain controllers, although the repeatable recovery after uninstalling this update still makes the update itself the main suspect.
Yes, this appears to affect multiple RDS hosts across different Windows Server versions. In several cases, the terminal services process eventually stopped accepting new sessions after users disconnected, and even console access through the hypervisor became difficult. Removing the update restored connectivity, so some administrators are temporarily blocking or pausing updates until Microsoft provides a fix.
That matches what I saw. I’m pausing updates for now and will test the next fix on a non-production host before deploying it elsewhere.