Windows 2008 Term Services issue

[Manic]

Bought myself a nice HP ML115 and have MS2008 Server running on it. The server has no monitor attached so am RDPing into it from a Vista desktop.

From time to time the RDP connection drops and I receive a counter informing me it will try and reconnect x of 20 times. Finally it fails and closes the RDP connection, however I'm unable to get back onto the server without rebooting the server (have tried a desktop reboot).

When it fails I can notping the server, destination host unreachable returned.
Server is running Static IP on inbuilt broadcom NIC.

Anyone experienced this?

[JamieMoles]

Sounds like a generic networking issue, without a monitor on the server it will be hard to diagnose accurately though - as you will want to be on the box itself at the time of the failure to investigate.

I would start by checking the drivers for the NIC on the server - broadcom chipset based drivers have been known to give alot of headaches, so make sure you have the latest release. Also make sure you hardcode the speed and duplex into the settings - both on the server and the switch - as this will reduce the time it takes for a connection to come back after failure.

[JoJoGabor]

Defintely physical networking. WHen it drops, check the port status on the switch. Try changing the cable, moving the NIC to another PCI card if its not an onboard. Update firmware also

[Manic]

Thanks Guys, the server is in my study connected into a bilion router that I can vpn. No switches just yet

Will try updating drivers, it's an onboard NIC, but I do have a spare 10/100 NIC card hanging around, and as my network is contrained by broadband shouldn't be an issue trying that one out.

[PRC1964]

Is there anything in the log files on the server? I'd expect something in there.

[Manic]

Didn't see anything obvious, however i must admit i thought the issue was with my desktop at first. When i have a mo will have a good look.

[AtW]

Check events monitor - you may see there failure of RDP DLL to be loaded on server side, this can happen due to junky video drivers, I had this issue with ATI ones I installed from Windows Update recently - had to rollback and it worked.

[darmstadt]

The only time I've seen something similar was when people have been using a remote session and instead of logging off properly, just closed the remote session. Their is a default number of sessions allowed to be running concurrently and you need to change this setting