Windows 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services unable to publish remote apps

Question

Setting up 5-6 servers to function as stand alone domain joined RDS servers.
Installed Roles
Remote Desktop Services
Remote Desktop Session Host
Remote Desktop Connection Broker
Remote Desktop Web Access

Everything installed without issues and we have pointed to our License servers for licenses which licensing diag shows good and working. The only thing I am not able to do is publish remote apps it seems. Just hangs at "Retrieving list of RemoteApp Programs that are available for Publishing" never completes and no errors. Just sits there
I verified shortcuts do exist in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Windows updates from Windows update are all installed and also have "recommended updates checked" and I am at a loss here. I don't have any GP's for RDS on the machine and local GP doesn't show any configured items. Am I missing something here?

We have another 2012 R2 server similar to this that works fine. Just not sure what it is. I can't see any differences. 2012 R2 standard.

Answer 1

Hi,

Please run below powershell command to see if you can get a list of publishable applications from a collection. (run as domain administrator)

PS C:\> Get-RDAvailableApp -CollectionName "Session Collection" -ConnectionBroker "server FQDN"
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/remotedesktop/get-rdavailableapp?view=win10-ps

If this command returns result successfully, you can try New-RDRemoteApp to publish the remoteapp.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/remotedesktop/new-rdremoteapp?view=win10-ps

Thanks,
Eleven

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Answer 2

@Anonymous My impatience got the best of me I guess. I let it sit there for over 5 min and then came back and the list was up for me to choose. So, it does seem to be working however takes forever for list to populate. After 5 min it still wasn't populated but I waited another 10 min and came back and list was up for me to pick apps to publish. Do you know why this would take so long? The server isn't in production yet so nobody is using it. I haven't experienced this in the past but that was on 2016 servers and it worked normally. Our app is older so will only work with 2012 R2 for the time being.

I will try the powershell way to see if I have better success.

Answer 3

Tried powershell command. Got this. No idea what this is indicating.

The argument reason is null or empty.
Parameter name: reason

• CategoryInfo : InvalidResult: (:) [], ArgumentException
• FullyQualifiedErrorId : JobStateFailed
• PSComputerName : localhost

DisplayName FilePath CommandLineArguments

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Job1

Answer 4

I was having the same problems (Retrieving list of RemoteApp Programs that are available for Publishing never completing (mine ran for 30 min & never did anything) & the PowerShell command failed w/ "The argument reason is null or empty." I was able to publish new apps using the "New-RDRemoteApp" command but didn't like that I couldn't do it via the GUI & couldn't get the list via PowerShell.

After a lot of researching & completely rebuilding my RemoteApps infrastructure (not in production yet & only 4 servers so not a huge task), I discovered that the problem was being caused by the shortcut for one program in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu on the Session Host servers. That program is MS Dynamics & it doesn't run locally on the Session Hosts. The shortcut points to the network share on our accounting server where Dynamics runs. I remembered that my problem started after I'd installed Dynamics on the Session Hosts so I deleted the shortcuts from both Session Hosts.

After I did that, the PowerShell command got me the list of programs available on my Session Hosts & the GUI completed populating the list of programs in about 5 seconds. As a further test, I put the shortcuts back, then tried again. Original symptoms were back. Since no one will actually log onto the servers & use the Dynamics shortcut, I just deleted it from my Session Hosts.