WIN 1903 REMOTE DESKTOP FAILS. Works fine in 1809

Hi folks,

I need some help/guidance.

I have a home network with 8 workstation/PC's and two domain controllers. All but one of the PC's are at 1903 and the DC's are Server 2012 R2.


I RDP from my desk into 4 of the PC's which are headless. It has always worked flawlessly.... until now.

The PC's are fairly old. One of the PC's, after upgrading (upgrade was offered by MS!) from 1809 to 1903, locked up when I RDP'd into it (from my 1903 machine). I read somewhere that this was a known issue with certain older onboard video chipsets. This particular machine used G43/G45 Express Chipset onboard video . . . and that was supposedly one of the offending chipsets. So, I installed an Nvidia 1050 video card with 1903 approved drivers in the PC (first I restored 1809... then re-upgraded to 1903). I also disabled the onboard video in bios. Windows 1903 ran just fine...…. until I RDP'd in... same problem... box locks up after a short period of time. Requires hard reset. As long as I don't RDP in, the PC runs 1903 just fine.

What am I missing here? When I RDP into the PC, is it using some other RDP video driver that is still "bad" in 1903? I did also try deleting the G43/G45 device in device manager and using generic PC video and that DID work.... but every time I rebooted, it re-loaded the G43/G45 device-drivers (that's when I went the Nvidia route). I have upgraded and then downgraded back to 1809 three times in the last month hoping some driver got updated.... no luck.

Any advice is appreciated.

Charlie

Exact same issue. I also need advice.

Problem solved!

As you might recall installing 1903 (WIN 10) on an older PC with certain chipsets resulted in a black screen while using RDP. This is a known issue, discussed by Microsoft as late as July 12th and still awaiting the fix (promised for July-August). The black screen issue has to do with a new display driver (WDDM) used in 1903. The “fix” forces the old XDDM driver to be used. From what I understand it isn’t just the display adapter that causes the issue with affected chipsets, so putting a new video card in the machine won’t help (and it didn’t for me).


Easy fix! Use GPO to force use of XDDM rather than WDDM. In Group Policy Editor under Remote Desktop Session Host -> Remote Session Environment ... set the policy “Use WDDM graphics display driver for Remote Desktop Connections” to DISABLED.


Worked for me on three machines. No side affects that I see. Once MS issues an update you can reverse the fix and use WDDM.

Thanks Carlieo for your solution which worked great.

For others and for clarity, it is actually: Edit Group Policy … Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates >Windows Components > Remote Desktop Service Host > Remote Session Environment ... set the policy “Use WDDM graphics display driver for Remote Desktop Connections” to DISABLED.

But give thanks to Carlieo

There is a work around for this issue might help:
Go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Default
Delete all MRU keys
Go to :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Servers
Delete all Sub keys

Then try to RDP, hope this will help.