Monday, 21 February 2011

Windows 2008 R2 Terminal Server Error: The task you are trying to do can't be completed because the Remote Desktop Services is currently busy. Please try again in a few minutes. Other users should still be able to log on. Solution/Fix/Remedy

The following is not a permanent solution or fix, but the steps should help logging users back on the terminal server without having to reboot and inconvenience other users logged on.

  1. Log onto the terminal server and open the Remote Desktop Services Manager.
  2. Select the terminal server you are logged onto in the left hand pane. (if you are logged on remotely you may not have sufficient permissions to end processes).
  3. Get the Session ID of the hung session(s)
    1. Click on the Sessions tab. Look for sessions which display the following characteristics (as the image above):
       - Session: Disconnected
       - User: [BLANK]
       - State: Disconnected
       - ClientName: [BLANK]
       - LogOnTime: Unknown
    2. Take note of the ID field. In the screen shot above this is "6".
    3. NOT REQUIRED: This step is not required but can be useful: If you right click on the session, click "Connect", enter a domain administrators password and click ok, you can connect to the session and can see at what stage the login has hung.
  4. Free the hung session(s)
    1. Click on the Processes tab, click on the ID column to sort the processes by ID. Scroll down through the list and find processes matching the ID gathered from the previous step (in this example "6")
    2. Commonly with this particular error, only 3 processes will be visible - LogonUI.exe, winlogon.exe, and csrss.exe
    3. Right click on winlogon.exe and click End Process. Once you end this process the other 2 should disappear. WARNING: do not end csrss.exe, this will crash and reboot your terminal server.
  5. Now get the user who was having difficulties logging on to try again.
Cheers
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14 comments:

  1. Anonymous5 April 2011 at 06:32

    Microsoft has released a hotfix that may fix this issue:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2383928

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2 August 2011 at 01:36

    Thanks for this!

    Had the same issue with a user this morning and this solved it.

    Cheers!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrew22 August 2011 at 19:03

    1st post - Thanks for the hotfix link, unfortunately it has not solved the issue. It seems to especially happen after rebooting a terminal server. Could have something to do with our Domain Controller being Windows 2003. I'm hoping upgrading the DC to 2008 R2 will resolve the issue. Will keep you posted.

    2nd post - your welcome! glad it helped!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Benoit Tanguay11 October 2011 at 10:02

    did your dc upgrade fix anything? i'm having the same issue?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous19 December 2011 at 14:15

    I can tell you we have a 2008 DC and we have the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Andrew19 December 2011 at 17:06

    I'd be interested to find out what setup everyone has that is experiencing this issue, if we can find a common denominator the source could be identified. Primarily information about the terminal server machines and machines hosting services used by terminal server (eg. DNS, domain controller, group policy, remote desktop service role services).

    Here's my setup (high level view):

    - 1x Windows 2003 SBS x86 Domain Controller, DNS server (not all updates applied, group policy extensions update scheduled)

    - 2x Windows 2008 R2 SP1 x64 with Remote Desktop Session Host role service installed, configured to use session broker. All updates applied.

    - 1x Windows 2008 SP2 x86 with TS Licensing and TS Session Broker role services installed. Our 2 terminal server's point to this for session broker & licensing.


    Is anyone getting this issue with a single terminal server? Or are we all using the TS Session Broker?

    Also, I've noticed this issue commonly arises after rebooting the terminal servers.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown18 December 2013 at 03:31

    Anyone found a permanent fix for this yet? We have it on a fully patched 2008 R2 Xenapp 6.5 farm :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. Unknown14 January 2014 at 04:51

    I have one a Dell PowerEdge with SBS 2011 sp1 [AD DS, DNS, DHCP, RDS and Exchange] roles installed on it. Recently I'm getting this error. Unfortunately all the two administrator were logged remote and got locked out. Now we have to reboot the server to manually kill the sessions which are stacked.
    Sheltonial, I'm providing this info in connection with your last post.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Unknown16 April 2014 at 02:42

    I have the same issue with all patchs from Microsoft or Citrix that are supposed to coorect this problem.



    Windows Thin Client & Citrix Thin Client

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bharath15 August 2014 at 07:03

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  11. B15 August 2014 at 07:56

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2465772

    ReplyDelete
  12. B17 August 2014 at 21:30

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2383928

    ReplyDelete
  13. Calle24 January 2017 at 00:10

    So the problem is:
    "cannot log into terminal server"
    ... and the _solution_ starts with:
    "log into the terminal server"

    ... am i the only one seeing the problem with that? To resolve the catch 22 part, you's have to open Terminal Services Manager" on a different server and connect to the failing server, or use the "reset session" with a /server: flag.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Unknown15 April 2019 at 03:48

    I'm having the same question. It happens when I try to log into server.

    ReplyDelete

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