Sysadmins can't reliably use Windows RDP sessions
10 posts in the last 90 days, all from r/sysadmin.
“I think that issue is when using RDS, this just plain old rdp client. [re: Unresponsive vm after rdp]”
“When I am sitting at the Windows 11 computer at my customer site, it has problems making an RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) to two of their servers in their office on the same network ID. One takes 2-3 attempts and the other disconnects me blaming, the network, firewall, etc…”
“Hello everyone. At my company we use an RDS farm consisting of 15+ RDSH servers. Among them, 4 servers are in the office collection, and they have the largest number of users. Some time ago a problem started to appear where users, when trying to connect, get a black screen with…”
Multiple sysadmins report Windows 11 clients randomly dropping Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections, with simultaneous sessions failing. Troubleshooting suggestions are met with frustration and a rejection of forum-based advice, indicating a systemic issue beyond simple fixes.
SOURCES (29)
“That’s what we were seeing. RDP issues. I believe it prompted for UN/PW then had issues never getting to desktop. Console in got logged in to a frozen desktop basically. Event logs indicated this bug. We were about to kill the rdp/rds services and some…”
“Interesting, I’ll have to verify but I don’t think rdp breaks mid session, it simply stops allowing logins at all via rdp or locally. Were you seeing similar behavior or nothing else ? [re: Unresponsive vm after rdp]”
“I think that issue is when using RDS, this just plain old rdp client. [re: Unresponsive vm after rdp]”
“On the remote connection your firewall is blocking UDP connections. Locally it’s not but rdp for UDP is abismal in my experience. So I disabled UDP for rdp via gpo for client and server and haven’t had issues since. Ms id pushing UDP for everything and while it should just work it doesn’t half the time.”
“Have you tried disabling NLA on the server? Press Win + R , type regedit , and press Enter . Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp . Double-click the key named UserAuthentication . Change its value data to 0 (Zero) and click OK . (Optional) If present, change SecurityLayer to 0 as well. Restart your computer for the change to take full effect”
“When I am sitting at the Windows 11 computer at my customer site, it has problems making an RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) to two of their servers in their office on the same network ID. One takes 2-3 attempts and the other disconnects me blaming, the network, firewall, etc. However, when I am offsite and RDC to the Windows 11 computer, it has no problem making an RDC to the these two servers. Simply put, RDC has to be made from an RDC. More info: I reinstalled Windows and tried another compute”
“I hit this exact thing on a Proxmox RDS farm before, turned out to be WDDM. There's a GPO under Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment called "Use WDDM graphics display driver for Remote Desktop Connections," and without real GPU passthrough it'll black-screen like that. Try turning it off and seeing if it clears up.”
“Hello everyone. At my company we use an RDS farm consisting of 15+ RDSH servers. Among them, 4 servers are in the office collection, and they have the largest number of users. Some time ago a problem started to appear where users, when trying to connect, get a black screen with no ability to do anything, including me, the admin, being unable to connect to the server. This is fixed exclusively by rebooting the server. Previously this problem did not bother me much, since it occurred fairly rarely”
“I get a black screen when I try to log into the cloud PC and get the following error: Your Remote Desktop Services session has ended, possibly for one of the following reasons: The administrator has ended the session. An error occurred while the connection was being established. A network problem occurred. Where should I start to look at for this? It was working before and then we handed it off to another user. I then reprovisioned it back to me and now I am getting the same error. In the proces”
Similar issue - when attempting to RDP to machines, got stuck at "Loading the virutal machine", reboot* fixed it (for now) - Attempting to reboot the machine fails with Remote Desktop Services…
“I had something similar at one point. I seem to recall it being ghost sessions still. I vaguely recall it being either Adobe Reader being hung on one of them, or the Print Spooler needing to be cycled to release them.”
“I'm dealing with a strange issue and I'm running out of ideas. On our Citrix server, a few users are unable to log in via RDP and are only getting a black screen. The desktop never loads, but you are able move the cursor. Some other accounts are able to connect to the server just fine. It's also possible to log in normally to the server through the vSphere console. I've already tried: Deleting the affected user profiles Removing the corresponding registry keys and possible leftov”
“I had already tested disconnecting and logging off the user manually, and initially I even had a GPO configured to automatically disconnect sessions after 15 minutes and terminate them after 30 minutes. I removed that policy thinking it might be related, but the issue still persists.”
“I’ll check the client-side RDP cache tomorrow as you suggested. Regarding the session handling: I had already tested disconnecting and logging off the user manually, and initially I even had a GPO configured to automatically disconnect sessions after 15 minutes and terminate them after 30 minutes. I removed that policy thinking it might be related, but the issue still persists.”
“Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) settings in Administrative Templates are managed via Group Policy (gpedit.msc or gpmc.msc). Navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host to configure connections, security, and resource redirection.”
“well windows server supports 2 admins. RDP limitiations have always been a license thing so maybe since this is IOT it supports 1 backend RDP sessions for administrative purposes like just like server.”
“On the machine I am testing on, it's not installed. Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring agai”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“I already tried that. Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”
“Update: The RDP disconnection issue does not occur on the Windows 25H2 base image when the machine is not joined to the domain. I also installed the July 2026 updates on the same machine while it was still workgroup-based, and the issue still did not occur. However, after joining the machine to the domain, the behavior changed: Local Administrator account: No RDP disconnections. Domain user account: RDP disconnections started occurring again. This makes it look increasingly likely that the issue”