RDP Dual Screen - Occasional Display Issue on ONE Display

Question

Have been doing engineering work remote for over a year running Windows 10 Pro on work workstation and Windows 10 Home at home. Dual monitors at home and at work. We use SonicWall NetExtender to connect to work and then RDP to connect to workstations. Has been working great for over a year but a week ago I started having crazy display issues. Every now and then my right display in the RDP session would totally get pixelated and blocked out.

Even if I un-maximized it it would stay that way but it was only the right monitor part of the RDP session that was wonky, my local stuff was perfect and if I dragged it around, it was just what was displayed in the RDP window right side, everything else perfect. I found the only way to stop it was to close the RDP session and re-open it. Then sometime later it would come back.

Talking with IT folks and today they safe mode completely removed my video drivers (AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 running 20.Q3, the latest certified Autodesk driver) and reinstalled fresh. Also I cleared the bitmap cache locally. Ran for a little bit and seemed fine but then happened again but this time was on the left monitor part of the RDP session, all previous times this happened it was right side.

I played with RDP display color changing from 15 bit to 32 bit, still happened. In my RDP session I can drag remote apps between the window halves (workstation monitors) and only when it's on the left part will it be messed up.

I did a screencast capture that really shows what is going on: https://www.screencast.com/t/9x19mOBY

Since RDP is actually just relaying the video feed from my workstation at work to my local session display I was thinking this was video card issues. But not sure why closing the RDP session and re-opening would resolve it, ....temporarily.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi @Scott V

1.what if you test RDP only on the left monitor (one monitor), is the issue still there?
2.would this issue happen when you open any specific programs?
3.Does the issue occur only when you are using Remote Desktop?
4.Try other remote control solutions and see if this is the app problem.
5.Do both machines (pro & home)updated recently ?
6.Please also update the remote desktop app.

2 possible workaround:

• Removing the cache files : C:\Users\YOURUSER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Cache
• Disabling hardware accelerated decoding under :Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Connection Client

Best Regards
Karlie

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Answer 2

My RDP session is a window on my home dual screens. I can maximize and span my local two monitors, or reduce the RDP window size. My remote workstation is also dual screen so my local RDP window shows both screens from work in one window with a split in the middle. The issue is never with my local PC, the problem is half of my remote window session regardless of how I am displaying that on my local PC. None of my local apps ever have this issue. I run Autodesk Inventor 2020 on my remote workstation which is very graphic intensive but the graphics issue doesn't just happen when that is running, it has happened with regular Office apps. All I have to do is shut down RDP and re-open it and everything is fine.

My home PC updates whenever an update is available. My workstation updates Fridays as per the control of our IT service. Not sure how to "update the remote desktop app".

We did clear the cache with no change. Yesterday I enabled group policy editor on my home PC and then enabled “Use the hardware default graphics adapter for all Remote Desktop Services sessions”. Did not have the issue yesterday but don't get it every day. Going to keep running and see if that helps.

Answer 3

Looks like the group policy change didn't resolve the problem. Today the right display part of my RDP widow went out again.

Answer 4

Not sure if this points to something but had my color set to True Color 24 bit. Restarted RDP but changed colors to High Color 16 bit to see if that would change things and it certainly did. After a few minutes the RDP session flaked out again but this time was the LEFT half of the window rather than the RIGHT half. Just changed to Highest quality 32 bit to see what that does.

Answer 5

Did you ever get this fixed?

I have the same issue, but only with hardware encoding enabled. If I disable hardware encoding the problems stop.
I also experience anything from between 0 to 500 ms audio delay with hardware encoding.