Remote Desktop on W2k3 intermittently crashing

[jamesp81]

I am using a Windows 2000 professional desktop machine to remote administer a Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition R2 server machine. I am attempting to use Remote Desktop to do this.

I downloaded the RDC client from Microsoft, installed it on the Windows 2000 pro box and everything seemed fine. I enabled RDC on the server, and again, everything seemed fine. I can connect to the server using remote desktop and it seems to run fairly well.

The problem is that it seems like after about 15 minutes, the RDC connection will crash the server. The symptoms I get is that in the remote desktop view on my Windows 2000 box, I can start clicking buttons but nothing happens. The buttons depress, but no action occurs. When I physically go to the server, instead of having the usual "press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to begin" welcome screen, I have a screen with nothing but the desktop background a mouse cursor. Ctrl Alt Del will not bring up the login screen or the task manager. The only way to get the server out of this situation is to power it off and restart.

When this server is installed and in use, it's going to be at a remote location, and we really can't be going to it to reset it if something goes wrong. Does anyone know what the fix to this problem is, or is this something that RDC just does, and we need to remember to play easy with it?

 

[PPettit]

Have you looked in the Event Viewer to see if there are any problems being reported?

I've been running 2003 Server, 2000 Advanced Server, and RDC for about 2 years now and have never experienced the issue you mentioned.

 

[TheCandyman]

First i would check the event logs to see what error is happening. That sounds like the only way to fix it since there are no errors showing. I would try doing the remote connection again, and bring up the task manager, watch the resources to make sure they stay normal. Just wondering if it's snowballing on the resources.

 

[jamesp81]

OK, it looks like it was crashing when the server tried to install printer drivers for printers on our network while I was logged into RDC. This machine is not going to be used as a printer server, nor is it going to need to print anything itself. Is there any way I can prevent it from doing this?

 

[PPettit]

You might be able to prevent printer installation via the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) and then selecting Local Computer Policy>Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Terminal Services>Client/Server Data Redirection. Change "Do not allow client printer redirection" to ENABLED.

I think there may be another place to do this, though.

You could also disable printer mapping within the client, but then you'd have to change each client that might log into that server.

 

[jamesp81]

Disabling printer redirection seems to have helped, as it runs longer, but it still occasionally crashes the machine, and now no errors of any kind are showing up in the event log.

 

[PPettit]

Have you tried using Remote Desktop from any other workstation? Does it still crash the server?

Is there a particular application that you're using when the server crashes? If so, does the server crash if you access that application while logged in directly at the server?

Do you have all of the latest Windows updates and drivers for your hardware?