Running Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services (session-based desktops).
Multiple session host servers, one DC, all running as VMs under Citrix XenServer 7.1. The servers are fully updated to present time as of 7 March 2019.
Every few days a user reports that after logging in to an RDS session he does not see his desktop but sees a black screen. When this happens, I can see that some users on that same RDS server still have their session working normally, but every user logging in after this also gets this black screen.
There are numerous references to this problem on the internet. It is apparently occuring since Server 2012 and has never been fixed.
Some people recommend to restart the Windows Audio service. Does not help in my case, never does when it happens to me. Other recommendations were to remove Firefox browser from the RDS session host servers. I did that two months ago and it seemed to help for one week but then it came back. I have not found any other recommendation - there seems to be simply no solution, except restarting that RDS session host server, which is a major inconvenience, it throws out the other users which still work, it takes 10 minutes or more to restart that server, and it can only be done manually. Most often it has to be force-restarted on top of it, as the server is totally unresponsive, and then some users may loose their user profile. Then I have to delete that user and recreate his user profile. Major trouble.
In the last few months I have rebuilt all RDS session host servers from scratch - total new installation, all updates, totally clean. It STILL happens. I have that system running since 2 years, and it has been a problem all the time.
When I try to log in to the console of the offending RDSH I can sometimes not even log in . Sometimes it does let me log in but I also get a black screen as local admin user (both Server\Administrator and Domain\Administrator). In this case, I can bring up TaskManager via Ctrl+Alt+End and run a command prompt. I can restart services this way and execute other commands, but anything relating to the UI does not show up. Screen stays black.
Managed once to get the black screen off by restarting ShellExperienceHost service but then this logged out all users somehow and corrupted some profiles.
The only applications installed on the RDSH servers are Chrome browser, Thunderbird email client, Libre-Office.
From what I can find on the internet this problem occurs since the release of Windows Server 2012. This is seven years ago. I do not know if this happens to everyone, but there seems to be no common denominator from what I can find, it seems to happens on all sorts of environments, pointing to a bug within Windows Server itself.
From what it seems it is related to the new UI system implemented with Windows 8 (and Server 2012) because I can find no reference to this occurring with Server 2008. I have not run RDS on Server 2008 myself so I have no first-hand experience.
Is there ANYTHING I can do about this? It does NOT seem related to my setup which is really rock-bottom basic. Many users are reporting this as a dreaded issue they hope one day will be fixed by Microsoft.
Can it be related to the virtualization software? Anything having experienced that issue on bare-bone installs of RDSH servers? Any difference with Hyper-V VMs?
WHEN IS THIS GOING TO GET FIXED? THIS IS A PROBLEM SINCE 2012 - 7 YEARS!
I feel forced to start researching for non-Microsoft solutions for RDS type solutions because I simply cannot tolerate non-functional software. To the users it looks like it is me as admin who is not doing his job!
Atradius