RDS image freezes on Windows Server 2019 Standard

Question

I'm currently experiencing a problem with Windows Server 2019 that looks like this - I connect to server through RDP, everything works fine for some time and then the image freezes. I can tell the session is still active because if I click on anything, close RDP windows and connect again I'll see that whatever I clicked on happened. It's just the image that is stuck. The problem can sometimes happen over and over after just few minutes of reconnecting.

The server in question have many users that connect to it from different client machines and many experienced the same problem.

I've found topics online that point out to turning off UDP on client side and I've done that through Group Policy Editor on my client machine but it didn't helped. I've also found this topic where another person describes the same problem, sadly without solution https://serverfault.com/questions/1141887/remote-desktop-session-appears-frozen-but-is-actually-still-working-even-though

I've first experienced this problem about month ago and after installing Windows updates on my client machine and server, the next day problem went away. Now it's back, so perhaps like in topic mentioned above it was the restart done after server updates that temporarily "fixed" the problem. I've restarted the server again yesterday but it didn't helped, although it seemed fine right after restart. I'll try doing it again tonight.

I don't have much experience in this field so I'm not sure how can I troubleshoot this. I looked at Event Viewer logs related to RDP on both client and server to find something that would correlate with times I've seen the problem, but I'm having a problem with finding anything relevant.

I would be grateful for any suggestions.

Answer 1

I've had this same issue in an environment that I administer (Server 2019 + Win10/11 endpoints) and found that putting the below fix in place has resolved it.

On your Server 2019, open the registry editor and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client

Create a new d-word (32-bit) value and name it UseURCP with decimal value of 0

Since doing this the customer hasn't reported any issues with sessions in nearly 3 weeks, whereas it was happening multiple times a day before.

Hope this helps some of you out!

Answer 2

Hello,

When the freezing occurs, have you observed the resource usage (CPU, memory, disk, network) on the Windows Server 2019?

Are there any resource-intensive applications running on the server?

Thanks,

Karlie

Answer 3

There are some processes running that can be resource-intensive at times, but I don't feel increased usage would explain this because server have been used for about two years and problem is only occuring now. Also at time when freezing was happening I was trying to free resources and it didn't helped in any noticeable way. That said, I have been looking only at CPU and memory and not at disk or network usage. In fact today I've been connected to server with task manager opened hoping that if it will freeze I'll be able to see what it showed at that moment. I now made sure that I'll be able to see disk and network usage too.

Yesterday I've restarted the server again and installed missing windows update. For now problem didn't occured to me, through it's probably just temporary like before. I'll keep on it and see.

Answer 4

Karlie, I have the same problem. My RDP sessions from a Windows 11 PC to my Windows Server 2019 machine freeze up. Like to OP said, I can click on the display and the image won't change until I close the RDP session then reopen (at which point I will see the result of my click).

Do you know of any resolution to this issue?