Win 10 ver 1903 Remote Desktop Issue

[Rick Reinckens]

I recently upgraded Win 10 from ver 1809 to 1903 on a number of older Dell's at work. (Optiplex 380 and 780, the 380 model was discontinued more than 7 years ago.) (Running 32-bit ... don't ask ...)

One that is set up to be accessed by Remote Desktop seemed to work okay, then started giving all kinds of screwy problems--sometimes wouldn't boot, would lock up, go in from RDP and it just shows a black screen ...)

I wound up moving the SSD to a different Opti 380 and same problems.

I checked on-line and it turns out there is a "known bug" that ver 1903 RDP is not fully compatible with SOME "older graphics drivers". One of the common symptoms is "The RDP session starts to login but then switches to a black screen. You can still see the cursor move but nothing else happens."

We're mainly using Nvidia GEForce 210 video cards. The latest driver is 342.01 from 2016.

I replaced the video card with an AMD Radeon 5450 and that seems to have cured the problem.

 

[Rick Reinckens]

THIS IS THE CURE--IT'S SPECIFIC TO 1903.

The cause is that for years video drivers have contained a set of "specs" that MS never looked at. Because they weren't actually used, card vendors often didn't bother to make sure they were accurate. 1903 uses WDDM, which does look at them.

To correct this in Win 10 Pro:

On the client PC:

1) gpedit.msc (Group Policy Editor)

2) Local Computer Policy

3) Administrative Templates

4) Windows Components

5) Remote Desktop Services

6) Remote Desktop Session Host

7) Remote Session Environment

8 ) Right panel: Use WDDM graphics display driver

9) Disabled

10) Ok (exit)

11) Reboot

Pre-1903 versions don't have the Use WDDM option.

(I had to go back to the Nvidia because the AMD driver conflicted with my free Acronis software.)

 

[Rick Reinckens]

Microsoft also issued an update that is supposed to fix this. It's best to try the disabling above first, since the update also changes a lot of other things.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4512941/windows-10-update-kb4512941

 

[AnrDaemon]

Looks like "1903 SP1" :D