How to reinstall 'Remote Desktop Service' service (TermService.exe)

Question

I am having intermittent problems with some of my Windows 10 clients where users are not able to remote into their machines via Remote Desktop. This is not RDS but rather plain ole remote desktop (TermService.exe). On some mornings after the nightly restart of the computer the 'Remote Desktop Service' service is not listening on port 3389 therefor users cannot remote into the machine. The 'Remote Desktop Service' service shows that its running.

Attempting to restart the 'Remote Desktop service' service hangs and we are forced to kill the TermService.exe process ID. This gets 'Remote Desktop Service' service listening again on port 3389 and my users are able to remote back into their machines.

I am looking to uninstall and reinstall the 'Remote Desktop Service' service but cannot figure out how to reinstall it.

Again, this is the Remote Desktop Service service that is part of Windows 10 that I am looking to remove and reinstall.

Any advice?

Answer 1

This is not RDS but rather plain ole remote desktop (TermService.exe)

Actually one and the same.

looking to uninstall and reinstall the 'Remote Desktop Service' service

There isn't any method for this. You could remove, reboot, add back the registry service subkey but unlikely to change anything. I'd check that windows is patched fully. Also when it happens again try from PowerShell on both source and target (using target address in both cases).

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName "192.168.49.142" -CommonTCPPort "RDP" -InformationLevel "Detailed"  

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Answer 2

Darn. I was really hoping uninstall / reinstall would fix this annoying problem.

The impacted workstations are fully patched. Its a very intermittent problem.
I will try that command the next time this happens.
This started happening around August. I thought it was patch related but backed out the patches and the problem still happened.

I can log on locally to the impacted machine and issue the command 'netstat -ano' and I see nothing listening on port 3389.

Answer 3

I can log on locally to the impacted machine and issue the command 'netstat -ano' and I see nothing listening on port 3389.

Hard to say, Might check the event logs for clues. Personally, when things like this happen, I'd probably just clean install it and move on.

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Answer 4

Nothing stands out in the event logs.
I can see that this issue happens on restart. Immediately after restart nothing is listening on 3389.
There has got to be an easier way to fix this than a wipe and reinstall :(

Answer 5

You can also start a case here with product support.
https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness

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