Hi....

On one of our Windows 2012 Remote Desktop Host servers we have the following problem.

--Not working example:

-- Working example:

---

So black boxes all over the place. When I troubleshooted this as admin I found that switching the theme to "Windows" under Windows standard theme  made the black boxes go away. But switching to the "Windows Basic" them makes them appear again.

So:

-- How do I fix the basic theme? As this is the theme regular users uses and they have no option of changing theme. RemoteApp technology is used.

-- Or possibly, as I think it works fine with the "Windows" theme, how do I apply this to all users logging in to the server?

Also, I have tried to find a solution on this on the forum, the internet and be general troubleshooting. No errors in the event log in Windows......

Looking forward to hear from you. Thank you in advance.

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Windows Server Forum.

For allowing user to have a particular theme, you can enable the GPO setting Load a Specific theme on RDSH server for particular users under below mention path.
User Configuration\policies\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Personalization

Please check below thread for reference.
how to change the desktop theme for all users
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/a11255a7-98d8-497d-812d-2e9f936a0901/how-to-change-the-desktop-theme-for-all-users

Hope it helps!

Thanks.

Hi Dharmesh,

Unfortunately it was not solved by applying the GPO. Some Remote Desktop users still get black boxes.

Any other good ideas?

Hi,

From looking at your screenshot it appears a high contrast theme (or elements thereof) is selected.  For troubleshooting purposes you can publish Personalization as a RemoteApp, that way it will be easier to switch themes as a normal user.

1. If you create a new user account and launch a RemoteApp on this server does the problem occur?

2. How do you have user profiles configured?  Are they local or roaming?  Are you using UPD?

3. Have you tried uninstalling Desktop Experience and then re-installing it?

4. If a user connects to a different RDSH server in the same collection, do they see the same issue?

-TP

Hi TP,

1: Nope it does not happen for all users on the same server. It can be an issue for some users and not for others.

2: roaming is not users and we don't use user profile disks.

3: Yes re-installing desktop experience has been tried

**** also deleting local user profiles has been tried

**** overwritting theme files from a working server to the non-working server has been tried

**** forcing a specific theme through group policy has been tried

4: No it can be working on several other servers for an user for whom it might not work for on a specific server

Thank you....

This issue is related to your windows basic theme, which is corrupted due to RDS. It's specific to Windows Server 2012 Standard and later versions i think.

You can resolve that by following steps below :

- Open %windir%\Resources. Change security properties of the "Themes" folder and give full control permission to your account. Enable inheritance to apply this setting for all sub folders, or, open "Themes" folder, and give full control permission to your account on file "basic.theme". 

This first step will allow you to modify the "basic.theme" file

- On "Themes" folder, right click "basic.theme" and click "open with". Choose Notepad. 

- Click on ctrl+f and search for "aerolite.msstyles". Once you find it, replace it by "aero.msstyles".

- Save this. After that, go on control panel - personalization, apply a theme randomly, then reapply the Windows Basic theme. 

Hope it helps !

Hi,

I have the same problem on one of 4 terminal servers(this servers made from one image). I done what Saad Ouakim advised. It works. But strange that after replacing aerolite.msstyles by aero.msstyles task bar became transparent. Actually I copied aerolite.msstyles from good server, renamed it to aerolite1.msstyles, and replaced aerolite.msstyles by aerolite1.msstyles in basic.theme. Result is the same: all looks normal except task bar.

Does anyone knows how to resolve this problem without editing basic.theme? May be there is hot fix? 

Update:

Not only task bar displays wrong. There are problems with buttons:

We cant run this in production. Need help!

• Edited by Viktor Bogdanov Monday, August 11, 2014 8:13 AM

Hi!

We have the same issue on three of our Remote Desktop 2012 Servers. No solution but a work around. Change this Reg Data: 

Key:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager
Type: REG_EXPAND_SZ
Value: DllName
Data: %systemroot%\resources\Themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles

We did not get an answer to our MS Call, yet. It seems the Aerolite.msstyles is not interpretated properly. The non working aerolite.msstyles has not changed. Its the exact same like on our working servers...

I also have a similar corrupted basic sysle issue running RDS 2012 servers...

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/44f33bd6-aa45-48cb-b886-352330e3f47c/win2012-std-basic-theme-problem-?forum=winserver8gen

Has anyone found a true solution without server rebuild?

I've just tried this (thank you Saad), with success.

Open %windir%\Resources. Change security properties of the "Themes" folder and give full control permission to your account. Enable inheritance to apply this setting for all sub folders, or, open "Themes" folder, and give full control permission to your account on file "basic.theme". 

This first step will allow you to modify the "basic.theme" file

- On "Themes" folder, right click "basic.theme" and click "open with". Choose Notepad. 

- Click on ctrl+f and search for "aerolite.msstyles". Once you find it, replace it by "aero.msstyles".

- Save this. After that, go on control panel - personalization, apply a theme randomly, then reapply the Windows Basic theme. 

This indeed worked for me, however somehow I think this isn't a true root cause resolution and am waiting for it to bite me later....

MS please can you offer assistance as this will prevent us migrating from Citrix to RAPP?

Lea

• Edited by LeaUK Friday, December 12, 2014 4:34 PM

This just happened to us too, same environment.  The server was buzzing fine for a couple of months and after a reboot this past weekend, the basic theme got corrupted.  None of the themes appear to be modified, and I compared to another working RDS and they are exactly the same.

I setup a local policy on the broken RDS to force users to use aero.msstyles and it seemed to correct the user color settings after the policy was applied.  I'll be testing the other suggested fixes later.

• Edited by Rick Dexter Monday, January 12, 2015 6:52 PM

We have also experienced this exact issue on an RDS Connection Broker which is also used as an RDS session host. Happened after a reboot when updates were applied but we've noticed others have mentioned it was straight after a reboot without updates applied.

We are going to apply the workarounds mentioned on here however our client would like to know what has caused this and how to put it back to the original configuration rather than use the aero theme.

Any answers to this issue which is clearly a common bug Microsoft?

I had this very issue with a 2012 R2 server with RDS.

The problem is with C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\aero\aerolite.msstyles file

I got this from a post that Saad posted:

"

This issue is related to your windows basic theme, which is corrupted due to RDS. It's specific to Windows Server 2012 Standard and later versions i think.

You can resolve that by following steps below :

- Open %windir%\Resources. Change security properties of the "Themes" folder and give full control permission to your account. Enable inheritance to apply this setting for all sub folders, or, open "Themes" folder, and give full control permission to your account on file "basic.theme". 

This first step will allow you to modify the "basic.theme" file

- On "Themes" folder, right click "basic.theme" and click "open with". Choose Notepad. 

- Click on ctrl+f and search for "aerolite.msstyles". Once you find it, replace it by "aero.msstyles".

- Save this. After that, go on control panel - personalization, apply a theme randomly, then reapply the Windows Basic theme. 

Hope it helps !"

However, I wasn't going to change that file, I just copied that file from a 2012 (not R2) server that had the desktop experience feature, and voila it was fixed.  If I copied that file from a 2012 R2 server, the problem stayed.

$0.02 - Good luck out there.