Why remote desktop is slow

January 2nd, 2015 cberinger Information Technology

With the latest of Microsoft’s line of server operating systems becoming more widely used, there are a lot of new servers being built [or spun up] on Windows Server 2012. One thing you may have noticed, every server with Windows Server 2012 connected to via Remote Desktop Connection [RDP] was displaying a huge amount of lag on the mouse. Doing any kind of task when using RDP was a struggle. Below is a fix we discovered.

The user interface lag is mostly due to the Mouse Pointer Shadow setting on the server being enabled. It seems that turning off this setting for a Remote Connection has been recommended on Windows machines for previous Windows versions, but it also helps in connecting to a Windows Server 2012 machine.

Go into Mouse settings on your server and disable pointer shadow:

Still having trouble with your Remote Connection? You might be able to increase bandwidth by removing some of the cosmetic settings in RDC under “Experience”. Unchecking any of these settings will lower the amount of content that is travelling to your machine, hopefully getting rid of some lag in the process:

Hopefully this has helped you as much as it helped me. I no longer dread having to connect to a Windows Server 2012 machine, in fact I prefer it!



If any questions pop up or if you’d like some extra help reaching these settings, please contact Beringer and we will respond.

Link to article with solution:
//social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/3dcd8f57-3efc-46e9-b2e1-34e61f3ddb3d/remote-desktop-connection-mouse-slow-with-windows-2012?forum=winserver8gen

If you hit Start > Run > MSINFO32 what build does it say you're on? I ask because the anniversary updated definitely changes a few aesthetic things, so it sounds like you are on anniversary to me.

Edited Sep 28, 2016 at 14:06 UTC

Change the remote desktop settings resolution color depth to use 16 bits and slow connections see screen shots below:

1. Resolution  Color Depth

2.Change the Experience configuration

Also check the wireless connectivity or network connectivity at home to check if you are using more bandwidth than usual.

I bet it is related to Windows updates  :[

dbeato wrote:

Change the remote desktop settings resolution color depth to use 16 bits and slow connections see screen shots below:

1. Resolution  Color Depth

2.Change the Experience configuration

Also check the wireless connectivity or network connectivity at home to check if you are using more bandwidth than usual.

Thank you Daniel, but this is actually not applicable to my setup at home. I'm using a Mac Mini and nothing on it or my home network has changed, plus I have no issues remoting into any of my other machines at work, just the Win10 workstation. 

md0221 wrote:

If you hit Start > Run > MSINFO32 what build does it say you're on? I ask because the anniversary updated definitely changes a few aesthetic things, so it sounds like you are on anniversary to me.

Thanks, MD. I believe you are right.

I'm on Windows 10 Pro, Version 10.0.14393 Build 14393, which apparently *does* indeed have the Anniversary Update 

Yep: //changewindows.org/build/14393

So I'm pretty sure the update is what broke RDP, question is, what will fix it? Seems like this would be a pretty big deal, right? We use WSUS, so maybe I just missed a follow-up patch that should fix this...?

I uninstalled the last 2 updates and that looks to have fixed it. Wish I'd made note of the KB number, but I just ripped them out and rebooted. 

My machine is a Dell Optiplex 970, if that makes any difference for anyone else who may be having this issue. Also, we use an RD Gateway server to remote in. Thanks, guys. 

I would actually award best answer to md0221.  i'll be glad to accept helpful post though :]

steveedwards wrote:

I would actually award best answer to md0221.  i'll be glad to accept helpful post though :]

Keep it! You can have one on me, Steve =].

Remote Desktop is great thing when it works but with Windows 10 I usually see one problem after another. I decided to write up some tricks I need pretty often when RDP is going crazy on some Windows 10 box. Nothing special but I hope I save some people hours of time on trying out different tricks found in internet.

Full screen RDP shows local taskbar in foreground

This is one of the most annoying bugs. RDP is opened full screen but what local taskbar is shown instead of remote machine one. It’s possible to see remote machine taskbar only if RDP window is not maximized. Solution is simple – we need to restart Windows Explorer.

1. Open Task Manager on local machine
2. Find WIndows Explorer from processes list
3. Right-click on it
4. Select Restart
5. Connect to remote machine again

RDP connection to remote machine is very slow

Another show-stopper is slow connection to Windows 10 machines over RDP. It doesn’t seem to happen with all machines but there are always some with issue. It doesn’t matter if connection is made from local network or over internet – when’ it’s slow, it’s just slow. Based on John D’s Tech Site article Remote Desktop slow problem solved it’s an old bug haunting around in Windows from version to version since Windows Vista.

For me it worked when I ran the command on both Windows 10 machines.

1. Open command prompt in administrative permissions
2. Run the following command: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted
3. Close command prompt

For me things worked out without restarting machines. The effect was immediate.

Connecting from high-resolution to low-resolution machines

Modern laptops come with damn good displays and it can be problematic to use remote machine with lower screen resolution. Everything is very small and sometimes it’s almost impossible to read the screen. There is RDP client available at Windows Store and usually end users are okay with it. Tech crowd needs different solution usually.

1. Open Windows Explorer and move to c:\windows\system32\
2. Check if there is file called mstsc.exe.manifest and if file doesn’t exist create it
3. Paste the following XML to this file:
    
       false
    
   
4. Save file and connect to some remote server again.

It doesn’t work for all applications on remote servers but most of applications I need there are well usable after this little hack.

Solution for poor WiFi adapters

I have come machines connected to network over WiFi as cables doesn’t reach these machines. Interesting thing is that also WiFi adapters can be problem although when sitting at machines we don’t notice anything. I have some machines connected to network over WiFi as there is no cabling to rooms where the machines are located. So, it’s straight connection over WiFi like shown on image below.

With some of these machines I had issues also after applying fixes described above. Not always but sometimes RDP connections got slow and then dropped. Few times I was not able to connect to those machines until I restarted RDP service. Sometimes WiFi connection went down and adapter started work again when I restarted machine.

These issues made me think about possibility of low quality WiFi adapters in machines. Okay, one machine has also expensive one but still ran into adapter issues. Working solution was short in the dark – I just thought maybe it works as routers have usually more stable hardware due to different network work loads. I connected problematic machines to my old WRT-54G with cables. Then I configured old router as wireless client bridge that connects to main router over WiFi. Viola! My problems got solved.

Network slow-down! Router-to-router wireless connection doesn’t come for free. Connection speed drops twice. Before client bridge I had 40 Mbps connection between machines and main router. After setting up client bridge connection speed went down to 20 Mbps.

Use client bridge and other router-to-router wireless solution only when anything else doesn’t work.