Terminal Server Clients Disconnected

[Ray Ready]

We have a remote office with 6-8 users connected via a T1
and have been running this way for nearly a year with few
problems. Recently we have begun to have remote users
randomly get the Remote Desktop Disconnected
message "Connection to remote computer was broken". The
problem is not as we are accustom to when our T1 goes
down and everyone gets disconnected. Just one user at a
time randomly thorughout the day. I have used network
monitoring tools to see if there are any errors on the
server NIC and have yet seen any. The odd thing is that
the Server still shows the connection as active and does
not actually change the state to diconnected until I try
to remote control it with TS Manager. The TS Manager
just increases the idle time and displays Active. The
users are getting frustrated that when they connect back
in the server creates a new session. I am at a loss to
explain what is going on and would appreciate any help on
resolving this.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

A few things here:

First of all, you should enable keep alives. This will
cause all sessions, once disconnected, to go into the
disconnected state.

support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;216783

Next, you should think about upping the value of
TCPMaxDataRetransmissions from 5 to 10 in the registry.

www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-
us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-
us/regentry/58805.asp

Lastly, I wrote a script a while ago that might help you
to connect disconnected sessions back to their original
sessions...

terminal.servebeer.com/php/check_logon_and_connect.php

-M

 

[Ray Ready]

I followed the articles and modified the registry with
the new values. We are still getting the broken
connections with sessions remaining active even though
the client lost the connection. Please advise as this is
very strange. As far as I know it should not be doing
this. Thanks.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

I assume you rebooted after you installed the patches,
correct?

You might want to run a network trace. If your network is
unstable in any way, then this will manifest itself in
disconnected clients.

-M

 

[Ray Ready]

Yes, I rebooted the machine. I have determined that the
users get disconnected when the are idle for an extended
period of time and have the terminal services client
minimized on their task bar and are working localy in
another app. Then when they go back to the Terminal
client it seems to hang for a few seconds and then the
box pops up saying the remote server ended the
connection. Also, I tested this on another server in our
office and got the same results. The weird thing is that
the router on our T1 does not show any dropped packets.
I am going to setup a trap on the firewall and see if
there is a faulty port or something dropping packets.
Thanks for your help.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Hmm...enabling keep alives should solve this problem.
Maybe try tweaking some of those keep alive registry
entries.

-M