Cannot login - all connections in use

[xwb]

I remoted on to my desktop and suddenly the connection went. Thought nothing of it until I got to my desktop. I couldn't login - it said that all the connections were in use. It was like I was on a remote session on my desktop. Rebooted - same thing. As usual, the sentence ended with see system administrator and since I was the sys admin, it was pretty well stuck.

Had a look on the internet - nothing like this had ever been reported.

Since it was to do with all connections, I just physically disconnected the network and then rebooted. Then all was well again and I could login. Reconnected the network and everything was fine after that.

 

[kjv1611]

From all I could find online, it looks like what you did ends up being the best fix in other instances as well. I modified your description to find some other instances of the error message - all did not include remote desktop connections. I also saw one instance where someone was using R statistics software (I think), and they stated a stuck loop caused it. I wonder if you could have had any program running that just got stuck. Also, my initial thought was of course that it'd be good to double-check that there is no malware activity going on. Being it's a # of connections we're talking about, what if a piece of malware opened up a port on your computer, and suddenly several bad sources tried to connect at once.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. Hopefully it's a one-time hiccup rather than symptom of a bigger problem.

At least 2 instances I could find online hinted that a Windows update caused the issue.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[DrB0b]

I highly doubt this has anything to do with it, but you don't have Carbonite running on this PC do you? If so, the new version has a really bad issue of tying up TCP ports and causing all kinds of login/remote issues. Just though I would toss this out there in case.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[xwb]

Don't have Carbonite running. Just 2 W10 machines with standard software.

The target machine had 2Gb memory. The machine I was remoting in from was a Macbook with a retina display running W10. No idea what the resolution was but it was very high. It had this annoying power button that was in the same location as a delete key on most other keyboards.

I'm guessing that something on the target ran out of memory and somehow it saved its state before rebooting. Hopefully it is just a hiccup.

 

[jrbarnett]

I had a similar issue many years ago on windows 2003 servers whereby someone would just close the Remote desktop client rather than properly logging off. I remoted to a different server with the same OS and a shared administrator username/password, then used the terminal services MMC snapin from there to connect to the problematic host. From the MMC snapin I was able to terminate the disconnected session.

John

 

[dbMark]

Ah, the memories. Years ago when I was handling more workstation Windows issues in a networked environment, I had a pattern for handling mystifying issues such as this.

Close the Window and retry.
Restart Windows and retry.
Reboot and retry.
Disconnect power and all other cables, reconnect after several seconds, boot and retry.

Usually somewhere down the list the issue was resolved. With servers or other apps involved, the solution might not be as simple as my list.