RDP Session Stuck, but in the Azure and Backend everything seems working fine. !!!!

Question

One of those strange, sporadic problems that seems to happen randomly.

Here's what happens. A user is connected to a Windows Server via RDP, doing some work, when all of a sudden their screen seems to "freeze". Nothing they do makes any visible change, including clicking to open the start menu, using keyboard combinations to open task manager, closing apps, opening apps, no click or keystroke makes any visible change, just the mouse cursor moving across the screen. It appears as though the entire server, or at least their session, is completely locked up.

Except it actually isn't.

As an administrator on the server, I can use mstsc /shadow to view their remote desktop session. And I can see that everything they click on is actually responding perfectly. They could type out and send an entire email if they wanted to, only they wouldn't be able to see what they were doing. Their view of the session is just totally frozen with the image of the moment this error began.

Having the user disconnect and reconnect "solves" the issue, as it seems to "wake up" the session, but only momentarily. Once this starts happening, it tends to happen again and again, every few minutes, until I reboot the server, which then solves the issue for a few weeks or months. Signing the user out and having them sign back in to a fresh session doesn't seem any more effective than disconnecting and reconnecting. This does not effect all users at once. It happens to random users, randomly, and has happened to me as well.

I've experienced this on three different machines, all running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter (Server Are Hosted on Azure, Region UK, US). They all happen to be VMs running in Azure if that makes a difference. But they're each their own installation (not clones of each other).

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

Answer 1

Hello,

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community forum.

It is recommended that you first investigate the performance on remote Azure Virtual Machines to ensure that the load on system resources such as CPU and memory has not reached a bottleneck.

Monitor performance of remote computers - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

Troubleshoot issues using Performance Monitor - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

If the issue persists, given the technical nature of your inquiry, I recommend redirecting your question to our specialized forum dedicated to this topic. This platform hosts experts who can provide detailed guidance tailored to your situation, ensuring a more precise and effective solution.

Azure Virtual Machines - Microsoft Q&A

Reference:

Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Session Hosts - Windows 10 hardware dev | Microsoft Learn

I hope this helps.

Best regards

Jacen