Thomas M. Turner's Tech Ramblings
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"The remote computer has ended the connection."
Seven words together which have become the bane of my existence, well for the past three days anyway.
Actually, it all started about three weeks ago, after I had installed the Release Candidate 2 of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (XP SP2-RC2) on an older testing computer. After the install, which seemed to go perfectly fine, I was no longer able to connect to it with a Remote Desktop Client. Of course, I first thought the new Windows Firewall was up to no good, but setting the Remote Desktop exception and even completely disabling WF didn't help. I tried several more futile things, but I was never able to connect with Remote Desktop Client again. Finally, I un-installed SP2-RC2 and I was able to connect with Remote Desktop Client, once again. Of course, seeing as it was only a Release Candidate and that computer was my test machine, which could have had any number of issues, I figured it was just "one of those things" and I moved on.
Unfortunately, two days ago, on a much newer, cleaner, rarely-used computer, I installed SP2 and the exact same problem connecting with Remote Desktop Client occurred. Seeing as these two computers have nothing in common hardware-wise, I don't see how it can be a hardware issue. Again, un-installing SP2 brought Remote Desktop functionality back. However, subsequent tests installing and un-installing SP2 seems to have broke it for good, unless I use System Restore to a point before the very first SP2 install.
NETSTAT shows port 3389 waiting and NETSH/FIREWALL shows port 3389 open. Nerrors show up in the Event Viewer and Terminal Services (and every other service) starts apparently normally. That's the most frustrating part, because I don't know where else to look, to find out any information on what exactly the problem is.
I've recently looked at the TSOC.LOG files, which did have errors, so I went into Add/Remove Windows Components, clicked ok, and after that my TSOC.LOG file looked like it does on computers that recently had SP2 installed and Remote Desktop works. Unfortunately, that didn't somehow magically solve anything for me.
Also, the "the remote computer has ended the connection" response is nearly instantaneous. In contrast, while trying to connect to a computer with Remote Desktop disabled (or even to a machine name that doesn't exist) seems to take 22 seconds to timeout. This would imply the RDC request is getting to my SP2 computer, but it just wants to reject the request.
This definitely seems to be rare, though, because even the Microsoft newsgroups barely has any posts regarding the dreaded response. Someone else did have this same thing happen, though, about a month ago, after installing a Release Candidate of SP2, but no one had any information to help them with this same problem back then either.
If anyone has any ideas, please e-mail me.
Seven words together which have become the bane of my existence, well for the past three days anyway.
Actually, it all started about three weeks ago, after I had installed the Release Candidate 2 of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (XP SP2-RC2) on an older testing computer. After the install, which seemed to go perfectly fine, I was no longer able to connect to it with a Remote Desktop Client. Of course, I first thought the new Windows Firewall was up to no good, but setting the Remote Desktop exception and even completely disabling WF didn't help. I tried several more futile things, but I was never able to connect with Remote Desktop Client again. Finally, I un-installed SP2-RC2 and I was able to connect with Remote Desktop Client, once again. Of course, seeing as it was only a Release Candidate and that computer was my test machine, which could have had any number of issues, I figured it was just "one of those things" and I moved on.
Unfortunately, two days ago, on a much newer, cleaner, rarely-used computer, I installed SP2 and the exact same problem connecting with Remote Desktop Client occurred. Seeing as these two computers have nothing in common hardware-wise, I don't see how it can be a hardware issue. Again, un-installing SP2 brought Remote Desktop functionality back. However, subsequent tests installing and un-installing SP2 seems to have broke it for good, unless I use System Restore to a point before the very first SP2 install.
NETSTAT shows port 3389 waiting and NETSH/FIREWALL shows port 3389 open. Nerrors show up in the Event Viewer and Terminal Services (and every other service) starts apparently normally. That's the most frustrating part, because I don't know where else to look, to find out any information on what exactly the problem is.
I've recently looked at the TSOC.LOG files, which did have errors, so I went into Add/Remove Windows Components, clicked ok, and after that my TSOC.LOG file looked like it does on computers that recently had SP2 installed and Remote Desktop works. Unfortunately, that didn't somehow magically solve anything for me.
Also, the "the remote computer has ended the connection" response is nearly instantaneous. In contrast, while trying to connect to a computer with Remote Desktop disabled (or even to a machine name that doesn't exist) seems to take 22 seconds to timeout. This would imply the RDC request is getting to my SP2 computer, but it just wants to reject the request.
This definitely seems to be rare, though, because even the Microsoft newsgroups barely has any posts regarding the dreaded response. Someone else did have this same thing happen, though, about a month ago, after installing a Release Candidate of SP2, but no one had any information to help them with this same problem back then either.
If anyone has any ideas, please e-mail me.
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