On 6/11/2012 I was able to access this machine using Remote Desktop, and on 6/12 I was not. As remote desktop failure is a rather common problem, there has been plenty of troubleshooting done. What it comes down to, is that there are no Remote
Desktop Listeners listed under Sessions in the Remote Desktop Services manager, nor is anything actively listening on the default ports. Firewalls off, Remote Connection Manager is started, no error messages, I can see termsrv as running from the task
manager services tab. Again, there is nothing listening which is why I can't RD to the box.
I have no active error messages from either client or server side, and only receive the generic unable to connect message when trying to connect using remote desktop. Windows updates are current, and this box is roughly the same as about 60 other domain
controllers. All 2008 R2 SP1 -
The basics - Yes, Remote Desktop is enabled. Yes I have recreated the connection using Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration. The connection shows a nice little Green Up Arrow. Security is set to Negotiate, and the Domain Controller
has a current Certificate from our internal CA> Mind you - none of this changed, RDP just stopped working.
I have read blogs and technet articles pointing to remotepg.dll, and this has been copied from another server and registered. It fails with an error of The DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80040201 -- and yes, it was run from
an Administrative command prompt. For a shot in the dark, I also ran regsvr32 from the syswow64 directory c:\windows\syswow64\remotepg.dll -- and that registers without an error, but I don't believe it to be the correct file.
When about to post this question, I followed the available links, and one post stated that giving permissions to the network service account at CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\RCM was the solution --- no, the network service account does not
need permission to this key.
Looking in the system saved logs for Microsoft-WindowsTerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager Operational --- I find - the previous log ins, authorizations, an informational stating that the Terminal Server role is not installed. In addition,
what started showing up is "Event 1155, TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager. The remote connection manager selected Kernel mode RDP protocol stack" that is the only change in logs I notice.
Replacing termdd.sys, and tcpip.sys to reset those did not affect this problem.
As this is a VM, I just added a few more NICs to test. Both synthetic and legacy - I was not able to RD to the IPs I assigned to either of these. And for process of elimination, I specifically stated to use them in the Connection settings,
rebooted, and was not able to RD. That has since been changed back to Any network adapter.
In case this was a corrupt registry tree, I replaced the entire Terminal Server tree in the registry from another virtual DC. Despite having all services stopped, it did bark at me that some keys were not overwritten do to being in use by a process.
And, this is where I stop for the day.
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