W2K3 Remote Computer has Ended the Connection

Aug 31

I'm sticking this in the wild just in case it’s of use to someone.

In some instances using a Physical to Virtual server migration process causes a problem with RDP. tested on W2K3 (Windows 2003 Server Enterprise)

This fix works sometimes for ordinary servers with the dreaded "The remote computer has ended the connection"

If you are getting a "The remote computer has ended the connection" error while trying to remote to a migrated server do the following:

Download and install devcon.exe from Microsoft. It’s a command line device manager tool.

Run devcon.exe which will extract it.

Open a cmd prompt
Navigate to the i386 folder devcon made.

Type

devcon.exe -r install %windir%\inf\machine.inf root\rdpdr

Wait until it completes.

That’s it, all done

§ JWT® said on : 2006-09-20 @ 15:12
Glad it was of help :)

Yeah I will throw a link to it from the first article, good thinking.
§ Jeremiah Cook said on : 2006-10-03 @ 20:18
You are the man, I needed this fix, it worked like a champ. Not sure what happened in the first place to cause the issue, this was not a P2V.
§ Vincent Nijman said on : 2006-10-20 @ 17:20
Hee, gr8! We've been looking into this problem also for some time now. We work a lot with images and after the installation of SP1 and then SysPrep we had the same issue. Just for info: accidentally we discovered the following solution today;
Take a working server (similar O.S. version ofcourse) and copy out the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\RDPDR key and import it in the system with the problems. This also works.
§ JWT® said on : 2006-10-20 @ 17:41
It probably should work OK, effectively you are overwriting the same key DEVCON is removing and reinstalling e.g. the ROOT\RDPDR.

My only worry with that method is will the replacement key value always be correct?

The DEVCON method forces the server to start from scratch with a basic set of values that will work as dictated by %windir%\inf\machine.inf.

But either way, any port in a storm. :)

What’s the expression? “If it’s stupid and it works it’s not stupid”
§ ka said on : 2007-09-13 @ 15:56
right on. Thx for posting this, easy short and sweet fix. Keep them coming