Windows Server 2019 RDS - Start & Search does not work, desktops don't load

heetsink 126

server 2019 1809 2020-12 updates installed OK, all the way back to March when it was stood up.

Its a RDS server, and I originally configured clients VHDX files to be on a storage server. Very reliable for many months.

First came the complaints about slow log ins, a blank screen for several minutes when people signed in.

then the complaints about the Start menu and Search not working. the left mouse button would not open the Start menu, and users could not enter text in the Search field.

users couldn't figure out how to get to network shares, so I had to create shortcuts on the public desktop.

then the reliability issues. the server would accept connections but the desktop would never render. just a dark blank screen first for several minutes, then then the GUI would never render until the server was powered off and on.

the event viewer start filling up DCOM errors in the system log every time a user signed in. Always about Cortona.

log Name: System

Source: Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM

Date: 12/18/2020 2:23:22 PM

Event ID: 10001

Task Category: None

Level: Error

Keywords: Classic

User: domain\user

Computer: server.domain

Unable to start a DCOM Server: Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.11.6.17763_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI as Unavailable/Unavailable. The error:

"0"

Happened while starting this command:

"C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe" -ServerName:CortanaUI.AppXa50dqqa5gqv4a428c9y1jjw7m3btvepj.mca

Event Xml:

<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM" Guid="{1B562E86-B7AA-4131-BADC-B6F3A001407E}" EventSourceName="DCOM" />

<EventID Qualifiers="0">10001</EventID>

<Version>0</Version>

<Level>2</Level>

<Task>0</Task>

<Opcode>0</Opcode>

<Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords>

<TimeCreated SystemTime="2020-12-18T20:23:22.975245900Z" />

<EventRecordID>622171</EventRecordID>

<Correlation />

<Execution ProcessID="2128" ThreadID="50464" />

<Channel>System</Channel>

<Computer>RDS.andresmedical.local</Computer>

<Security UserID="S-1-5-21-1177238915-1897051121-725345543-7972" />

</System>

<Data Name="param1">"C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe" -ServerName:CortanaUI.AppXa50dqqa5gqv4a428c9y1jjw7m3btvepj.mca</Data>

<Data Name="param2">0</Data>

<Data Name="param3">Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.11.6.17763_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI</Data>

<Data Name="param4">Unavailable</Data>

<Data Name="param5">Unavailable</Data>

</EventData>

</Event>

SFC /scannow found nothing
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth with the source switch said it found issues and fixed them but...

a few days later the server was stuck with blank screens again!

I reset profiles to be stored on the C drive and that was not a fix. Start worked briefly. a few days later the server was stuck with blank screens again!

what started as an annoyance mutated into a big disruption. Seen many posts talking about the broken start but not much success.

if I navigate to C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe and run as admin,

Unable to start a DCOM Server: Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.11.6.17763_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI.AppXfbn8w4s0jbk3tjevpcn9kaxerc6rby8k.mca as Unavailable/Unavailable. The error:

"0"
Happened while starting this command:
"C:\Windows\system32\backgroundTaskHost.exe" -ServerName:CortanaUI.AppXy7vb4pc2dr3kc93kfc509b1d0arkfb2x.mca
will I have to rebuild from scratch or can this server be saved?

Björn Braun 81 Reputation points

2021-01-16T00:32:19.053+00:00

I can confirm this issue.

We are experiencing the same problems on Windows 2019 servers (same setup). Howerver the problem began surfacing in January. At first we had only one customer server with this kind of trouble. Now another developed the same fault.
It seems to only affect RDS Servers.

Reinstalling Cortana usually fixes the start menu problems. It also reactivates the notification center. This fix however does not last for long. The bigger issue is a failure of AAD.BrokerPlugin which renders Outlook inoperable.

Whenever shell experience host, cortana crash, search and aad broker go down with it. aad broker cannot be fixed by reinstalling. Reboots are useless. The only fix for us was to restore snapshots. However the problems will resurface after 5 days or even 1 day.

The servers have been running for months or years without any problem of this kind. A solution to this problem is urgent since our servers are being rendered inoperable
Andrew Wright 1 Reputation point

2021-01-18T11:33:48.95+00:00

Hi @Björn Braun

Please take a look at this post to reset the ADD.BrokerPlugin

Andrew
Björn Braun 81 Reputation points

2021-01-21T12:51:45.147+00:00
Oh man,

that did it. Well I did not follow the instructions and just purged Teams from a server. The problem occurred again after 6 days. This morning at first login the user also opened teams. Cortana, Shellexperiencehost, aadbroker and searchui were all inoperable. After purging Teams I ran:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

And it fixed everything. When users logged in again, Outlook and everything else worked fine. No DCOM Errors in Eventlog.

What I don't get. Why does this seem to happen after 3-7 days runtime.
According to Teams it was last updated in Dec. 18th 2020. We startet having problems with it in Jan 2021

We also have Office Updates disabled on a few systems. Maybe it could also be a problem but for now removing teams is fine by me

Thanks alot!
Björn Braun 81 Reputation points

2021-01-21T19:30:33.97+00:00

Well that didn't last long

Errors appeared 2 hours later. However I restored a previous snapshot of this particular RDS Server and checked the registry
Turns out its an old 2016 bug.

Open regedit
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\FirewallRules

FirewallRules contained about 50k + entries. Deleted all entries containing {} and left standard entries untouched.
Took a very long time to delete.

There are scripts out there to automate this.

Didn't think this problem still exists, especially since firewall was disabled.

12 answers

Björn Braun 81 Reputation points

2021-03-04T13:54:01.117+00:00
I guess we found a solution or at least the right combination of solutions.

Since this problem kept reappearing even after we cleared out most of the bloated keys. So we looked and oh boy there was another.

Hiding in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\RestrictedServices\AppIso\FirewallRules

Within were about half a million entries... needles to say it took regedit about an hour to open it.

So I removed it via powershell

Remove-Item "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\RestrictedServices\AppIso\FirewallRules" New-Item "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\RestrictedServices\AppIso\FirewallRules"

After this, you don't even need to reboot. Just log off all users and login again. Startmenu and everything else will work as it should.

To prevent this from happening

Set DWORD "DeleteUserAppContainersOnLogoff = 1
in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy

Make sure to Cleat out \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\FirewallRules first. With a script or manual.

If you don't clean first, loggin off users will take a very long time. If everyhting is clean then logoff will take slightly longer because it will clean up all user entries by itself hence not bloating the keys again.
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14 people found this answer helpful.
Suleyman Muhammadov 1 Reputation point

2021-03-06T13:13:15.09+00:00

For a month I could not solve this problem, 5 terminal servers worked without a taskbar and a start menu). Thanks for the solution, everything works great!

Linseisen, Maximilian 1 Reputation point

2021-04-13T14:09:21.55+00:00

thank you so much i spent weeks in troubleshooting this problem... your solution did the job.

Régis Soares 6 Reputation points

2021-04-20T14:50:52.61+00:00

Thank you so much!! Solved the problem... hope it is definitive solution!!

Jean-François Pouliot 1 Reputation point

2021-04-30T11:14:58.367+00:00

I had the same problems on 3 RDS 2019 server. Ran the DevMode command and cleaned the registry keys. But now my users keep losing their default printer/default apps every time they log out of their session. Anyone else ran into that problem?

thetomme 1 Reputation point

2021-05-17T19:11:03.7+00:00

goodman! worked for me

Stefan Eppendorf | WestCom IT 1 Reputation point

2021-06-07T16:21:15.553+00:00

Thanks for your solution! I was troubleshooting the same problem for very long time and even found the problem in cortana and the firewall rules but I couldn't find the missing piece of reinstall cortana and your added DWORD. I only worked with user profile disk deployment on Server 2019 after migrating from 2012 R2 and ran in a lot of problems with the vhdx files and with the "no search/start menu" problem. My Question is: Do these problems only happen with the user profile disk deployment or do they also happen with the old style C:\users\%username% deployment? I also noticed on a other system with 2016 UPD deployment that the users cant delete files on the desktop (same problem on 2019 UPD deployment I couldn't solve so far)

deserteagle915 1 Reputation point

2021-06-14T18:42:42.417+00:00

Does anyone else have a permanent fix for this,

Setting the Set DWORD "DeleteUserAppContainersOnLogoff = 1 does not prevent it for us on our RDS farm.
We have to run powershell script every 2-3 days on RDS session hosts to correct start menu issue.

Stefan Eppendorf | WestCom IT 1 Reputation point

2021-06-15T06:30:13.39+00:00

The Problem reoccurred for again today too. When I tried to login via RDP I got to the authentication mask and after logging it showed a short loading screen and then an error note that the login wasn't possible. So I guessed the firewall wasn't the problem, I checked the firewall rules but they where not bloated. I tried a reboot for good measure but that got me nowhere. Then I run the "Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}" command again and the login was possible again. What does this command do actually do? For me it seams like re registering the cortana installation path and disabling the dev mode. I think the ground issue must lay there somewhere. For now I create a task in the task planner so that command runs every night.

Rob Janssen 1 Reputation point

2021-10-14T10:37:53.007+00:00

Five Windows 2019 RDS servers, problem solved! Thanks!!

Ulrik Jensen 1 Reputation point

2021-12-21T06:57:23.52+00:00

Thank you BjrnBraun-5155, did it for me. Most appreciated.

Warren 1 Reputation point

2022-11-30T15:17:05.437+00:00

Thanks BjrnBraun-5155. We had this issue come up a few weeks ago and once I put in to place your fix, all is working great. Solid Work and thanks.

Isaac-7978 1 Reputation point

2023-03-01T13:49:59.3266667+00:00

Thank you for this solution, been trying to figure this out for a while.

Vlad Mihai 0 Reputation points

2023-04-11T16:18:26.6966667+00:00

worked like a charm, it was becoming really annoying on all 12 servers i manage

Paul Anderson 0 Reputation points

2023-06-09T11:58:46.75+00:00

Day two and so far has fixed all the issues I've had with RDS Server 2019

Brian Maher 1 Reputation point

2023-09-22T18:33:30.6266667+00:00

Fantastic work, Bjorn! Thanks so much for taking the time to share this! Has helped point us in a new (and hopefully right) direction to chase down some very odd, phantom performance gremlins!

Julien JB. Broquet 0 Reputation points

2023-10-06T14:40:23.89+00:00

Top, thanks
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Eleven Yu (Shanghai Wicresoft Co,.Ltd.) 10,671 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2020-12-21T04:41:21.353+00:00

Hi,

Please first check the general troubleshooting steps for Event 10001.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2008-R2-and-2008/cc774391(v=ws.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

And have you tried to reinstall Cortona?

Run PowerShell command as an administrator:
Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Thanks,
Eleven

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heetsink 126 Reputation points

2021-01-25T19:25:09.923+00:00

Unable to reinstall Cortana, see below
Description:
Unable to start a DCOM Server: Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.11.6.17763_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI.AppXfbn8w4s0jbk3tjevpcn9kaxerc6rby8k.mca as Unavailable/Unavailable. The error:
"0"
Happened while starting this command:
"C:\Windows\system32\backgroundTaskHost.exe" -ServerName:CortanaUI.AppXy7vb4pc2dr3kc93kfc509b1d0arkfb2x.mca
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM" Guid="{1B562E86-B7AA-4131-BADC-B6F3A001407E}" EventSourceName="DCOM" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">10001</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2020-12-18T20:55:37.198494600Z" />
<EventRecordID>622336</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="2128" ThreadID="65020" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
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Paul Allan 6 Reputation points

2021-02-04T10:15:56.103+00:00

We are also running a 2019 RDS Farm and we have had this exact same issue with the Start Menu not working this week. Initially it was on one host, and now it is happening on two hosts! We ran the command on one host and it has fixed it. We have not ran it on the second host yet, as we had to stop it taking connections as it was causing so many issues for users.

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Does MS know why this is happening? Has a Jan update caused this issue? It is very worrying since most of our staff are currently WFH and are relying on the RDS servers to be able to work effectively.

Many Thanks
Paul.
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Prithish Poojari 1 Reputation point

2021-02-08T14:25:40.6+00:00

We are having similar issue with our 2019 RDS farm as well, seems like it just slowly showing up on rest of our servers in the farm.
When I ran the below command it fixed the issue on couple of our RDS server but seems to popped up back after like 3 to 4 days ,

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Can't really say what the root cause is, hope someone have an answer that is a permanent fix, hope this is not one of those Microsoft bug .
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