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TobiasLoew-4465 avatar image
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TobiasLoew-4465 asked Jingruihan-MSFT commented

Windows server 2019 remote desktop unresponsive / ui errors

Hi,

my company uses an Windows Server 2019 (17763, LTS) for SW-development via mstsc-sessions.
The server is a new HPE DL360 with two Xeon 6248R, 768 GB of RAM and 8TB of disk space (system on 500GB M.2-raid-1-disk)
When there are three or four RDP-sessions running in parallel the system get's more and more unresponsive, up to the point where the ui is almost completely unusable: cmd-windows won't show text anymore - you simply have to type and hope it's correct, logins to already existing rdp-session take like 10 minutes and rebooting is the only resort.
We also have older Windows Server versions, Windows Server 2016 and 2012 on less powerful machines, where we never had such problems.
Currently, that server is unusable for development.
Any ideas, what to do?

remote-desktop-services
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ManishJ avatar image
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ManishJ answered

In the Windows event logs do you see any error pertaining to service crash or out of Memory errors, it could be there might be some application installed on it that could be leaking memory?

768 GB is way way too much RAM for a Normal RDP session and usual activity to work, What are the other roles and features installed on this server, I am quite sure you are not using these specs for a Terminal server, can you check for those app and how is the performance of the server. Do you see a Spike in CPU or Memory usage when you start seeing the sluggishness

May be back to the basic task but also run Performance Monitor see whats going on and if needed Procmon can also be fired up

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TobiasLoew-4465 avatar image
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TobiasLoew-4465 answered TobiasLoew-4465 edited

The server is currently ONLY doing RDP sessions, no other service is yet running on it. So, it is definitely not low on hardware-resources.
We have comparable setups with older HPE DL360 (256 GB RAM) running Windows 2016, where 4 RDP-sessions are running concurrently over several days or even weeks without any problems.
It really seems like a lack of desktop-heap, as the ui has drawing errors (missing elements, fallback system-fonts) , but I checked the registry and it has the default settings for rdp-session's desktop-heap sizes.
When I was the only RDP-user on the system for setup etc. everything worked fine. But when my colleagues also started using it, the problems got massive.

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ManishJ avatar image
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ManishJ answered

I doubt that RDP session would take such a toll on the server until and unless someone is doing some very heavy real-time processing

So coming back to the questions do you see anything out of the ordinary in the Event logs and during the time of the issue did you performance monitor to check more, for stater you can also use process explorer, run it as an admin and then check which system resources are being overly utilized and also check on the RDP stacks and see if you find anything out of the ordinary

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

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Jingruihan-MSFT avatar image
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Jingruihan-MSFT answered Jingruihan-MSFT edited

Hi,

Patch system fully with recent windows update: run Winver check current OS build number, reference below link information and we can determine the patch level via build number:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-10-and-windows-server-2019-update-history-725fc2e1-4443-6831-a5ca-51ff5cbcb059

If possible, disable third party software/process, re-start system in Clean Boot, do not manually start third party software/process, and confirm that if problem happens again.

If the session host is physical device, check/update hardware driver, bios, firmware and make sure driver version is compatible with current OS version.

Above are general suggestion to improve system performance. Just for reference.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Best Regards

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TobiasLoew-4465 avatar image
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TobiasLoew-4465 answered

Hi Jingruihan,

thanks for your reply. The OS is 17763.1879, installed on 03/18/21 with all available driver and Windows updates installed.
As I already said, after a reboot the system runs stable for a while, but when some users (not more than 4) log on through RDS and start using VisualStudio for development, the system get's more and more unresponsive. Logging users off doesn't help then! Only a reboot.
And as also said above, we have older HPE servers running Windows Server 2012 and 2016 where we do exactly the same and those machines run stable over weeks or even months.

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Jingruihan-MSFT avatar image
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Jingruihan-MSFT answered Jingruihan-MSFT commented

Hi,

If you have console session, please logon the session console to view and check the sessions is it still slow. Somehow, it will involve domain service if the console still slow. If you don't have console session, we need to figure out what makes this "logins to already existing rdp-session take like 10 minutes" happened. In such case, collecting logs and traces will be the way to investigate for further.

In the meanwhile, you could check the event logs via Event Viewer and see if there are error occurred.
If the event logs did not record any errors related to the freezing issue, you may consider to collect procmon traces and check further.

Refer this link:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Best Regards

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Is everything ok?

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