Terminal Services Remote Desktop

[Guest]

I am trying to add Remote Desktop functionality to my XPE image. Remote
Desktop works as a client (I can access my development PC) but not as a
server.

I have a minlogon XPE image - is this possibly the problem right there?

 

[KM]

John,

I am trying to add Remote Desktop functionality to my XPE image. Remote
Desktop works as a client (I can access my development PC) but not as a server.

And you have probably got the "Terminal Server Remote Desktop" component included?

I have a minlogon XPE image - is this possibly the problem right there?

This may be a problem related to the only available context under a Minlogon image - LocalSystem.
What account do you use to create a RDP session to connect to the device?

 

[Guest]

And you have probably got the "Terminal Server Remote Desktop" component included?

Yes.


This may be a problem related to the only available context under a Minlogon image - LocalSystem.
What account do you use to create a RDP session to connect to the device?

I do have a local administrator account created on the device. I am trying
to simply use mstsc.exe to connect to the device. I tried putting this user
and password in prior to attempting the connection to no avail. In all cases
I get:

---------------------------
Remote Desktop Disconnected
---------------------------
The client could not connect to the remote computer.

Remote connections might not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to
accept new connections.
It is also possible that network problems are preventing your connection.

Please try connecting again later. If the problem continues to occur,
contact your administrator.
---------------------------
OK Help
---------------------------

I did check that the Deny Connections registry setting noted in some other
posts is set to 0.

John

 

[Guest]

And you have probably got the "Terminal Server Remote Desktop" component included?

Yes.


This may be a problem related to the only available context under a Minlogon image - LocalSystem.
What account do you use to create a RDP session to connect to the device?

I do have a local administrator account created on the device. I am trying
to simply use mstsc.exe to connect to the device. I tried putting this user
and password in prior to attempting the connection to no avail. In all cases
I get:

---------------------------
Remote Desktop Disconnected
---------------------------
The client could not connect to the remote computer.

Remote connections might not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to
accept new connections.
It is also possible that network problems are preventing your connection.

Please try connecting again later. If the problem continues to occur,
contact your administrator.
---------------------------
OK Help
---------------------------

I did check that the Deny Connections registry setting noted in some other
posts is set to 0.

John

 

[Guest]

And you have probably got the "Terminal Server Remote Desktop" component included?

Yes.


This may be a problem related to the only available context under a Minlogon image - LocalSystem.
What account do you use to create a RDP session to connect to the device?

I do have a local administrator account created on the device. I am trying
to simply use mstsc.exe to connect to the device. I tried putting this user
and password in prior to attempting the connection to no avail. In all cases
I get:

---------------------------
Remote Desktop Disconnected
---------------------------
The client could not connect to the remote computer.

Remote connections might not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to
accept new connections.
It is also possible that network problems are preventing your connection.

Please try connecting again later. If the problem continues to occur,
contact your administrator.
---------------------------
OK Help
---------------------------

I did check that the Deny Connections registry setting noted in some other
posts is set to 0.

John

 

[KM]

John,

I never tried RDP session to Minlogon based device but I recall some Minlogon/RDP problems have been reported in this NG.

If you can figure this out, that would be great.

Some hints:
Does the "Terminal Services" service up and running in your image? (IIRC, it depends on DCOM services)
Do you see any errors regarding RDP/Terminal services in FBALog.txt and/or SetupApi.log?
What Event viewer log show after you started the "Terminal Services" service? What is shows after you are trying to connect to
the device?
Any chance for you to launch Regmon on the device while you are trying to connect to it over RDP? You may be able to see what
reg.branches are getting accessed and where it fails.


It acceptable, the last hope for you could be switching to Winlogon.

 

[Guest]

Thanks KM,

It looks like TermService is not sent to run automatically. If I start it
manually the device screen goes blank and after a period of time the other PC
says the connection has timed out, try connecting again. However, the device
stays blank as well and there is no way to wake it back up.

Any of that seem familiar? The fact that I can't back to the device seems
likely related to minlogon.

thanks again,

John

 

[KM]

John,

Yes, it does seem to be related to Minlogon.
There is so many problems for RDP to be running on Minlogon image (no GINA, unknown account handling, etc.) that I can't imagine you
will be able to make it to work (at least it won't be easy). Not sure if you really want to spend so much time on things that are
not supposed to work.
The worse thing is that Minlogon is undocumented so we can only guess, debug, hack.

If you still want to investigate this more deeply, take a look at the Event Viewer log right after you started Terminal Services. Is
there anything helpful?
Also, with Dependency Walker go through the Terminal Services binaries and see if anything is missing within your (pretty general,
right?) Minlogon image. I'd even tried to start the services (like using "net start ...") through the Dependency Walker Profiler to
see if anything dynamically loaded is missing.

 

[Guest]

Thanks KM,

This is definitely looking ugly. I'll have to see whether this is really a
feature we need...

regads,

John

 

[Guest]

Hi John,

I've successfully built a thin client using MINLOGON and mstsc.exe as the
shell. I found that XPe SP2 enabled the built-in firewall and that was
preventing my connections. When it is off, I have no problem connecting and
I am also using an Administrator account. Is your firewall off?

Cheers,

Micah

 

[KM]

Micah,

Are you saying you were able to connect TO the device over RDP when you had minlogon image running there with firewall off?

Usually, when you have mstsc.exe running as shell ("thin client") you can easy connect FROM the device (i.e., RDP as client).
John's issue was with "RDP as server".

 

[Guest]

Ahhh, you are correct. I am using mine as a client only, not as a server. I
can see how MINLOGON would not work for an RDP server due to missing
authentication support.

Micah