Report that Server 2012 R2 Monthly Rollup KB 4512488 breaks RDP login

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Reader @sdsalsero reports: Last night we upgraded our public-facing Server 2012R2-based RDS Gateway (GW) and Connection Broker (CB) servers to the bra
[See the full post at: Report that Server 2012 R2 Monthly Rollup KB 4512488 breaks RDP login]

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I have not seen this problem on RDP Gateways for SBS 2011 nor 2012 R2 Essentials (RDP GW). I am tackling a couple 2016 servers with the RDP GW service tonight, so we shall see.

But their configuration is not as common and very specific, they’re using an additional broker server – and I am almost willing to bet that’s what the patch broke.

If those were my servers, I would attempt to roll back just the CB Server and see if that fixes things.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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@NetDef, thanks for the reply! Yes, we rolled-back the patch on first the GW, then the CB, and then we could login again. I suspect you’re right that the patch on the CB was the root-cause.

Also, in my original post, I included the errors from the Windows Event log (which I only reviewed after-the-fact) which seemed to indicate that the RD Connection Broker service wasn’t running. I was under the gun to get the RD environment back up-and-running, though, so I didn’t troubleshoot, I simply rolled-back.

Now, I plan on cloning the handful of ‘involved’ servers into a new AWS VPC and test the upgrade again.

P.S. I inherited this setup so I don’t know why the target ‘Computer’ setting is pointing at the CB, or what RAP/CAP is responsible for then forwarding incoming connections to the actual session-hosts in the Collection.

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I hear that — when time is of the essence, it makes sense to roll back quickly and regroup.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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We use VNC to remote access our servers. RDP is too risky.

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Do not confuse Windows RDP with SSL Encrypted RDP-GW plus RDP behind a firewall. 😉
Similar names, very different protocols and security.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Kirsty

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I’m going to add this report here even though I can’t be certain if the behavior and symptoms I saw are verifiable or repeatable.  However, I think it’s possible that KB4512488 may have bigger issues than just breaking RDP login on Server 2012 R2.

I have a client with a Toshiba Satellite laptop (Model S55t-B5273NR), i7-4710HQ CPU, 8GB RAM, running Win 8.1 Home 64-bit and Office 2013.  The user had previously set Windows Update to just go ahead and “Install updates automatically”.  Consequently, yesterday, the system automatically downloaded KB4512488 .  And when she shut the system down for the day it installed the update.

Later in the day she powered on and booted the system back up for some additional work.  The system took about three times as long to boot up to get to the Desktop.  But once it got there she noticed that everything was responding agonizingly slow.  And as she tried to use it (e.g., Outlook mainly) it continued to get slower and slower.  Eventually it stopped responding altogether, where she couldn’t even get a response to clicking the Desktop or Taskbar icons.  She had to press and hold the power button to get the system turned off.

She then called me.  We powered the system back on.  And eventually, after about 3 to 4 times longer boot time than usual, we were able to get the Windows Desktop.  But once again, things quickly started slowing down.  I was able to bring up Task Manager.  CPU usage was normal (around 15 to 20%), and memory usage was minimal.  But the disk activity was pegged solidly at 100%.  I tried to drill down with Resource Monitor to figure out what processes were behind the high disk activity.  But before I could get any useful info, the system bogged down so severely that I couldn’t even get Resource Monitor or Task Manager to respond any more.  Performance deteriorated quickly in just a matter of minutes after getting the Desktop.

Eventually, after restarting the system multiple times, I was able to get access to System Restore.  I selected the most recent restore point prior to this latest update (which happened to be from 8/12/2019).  The restore process took quite a while; but it eventually finished.  Only problem was that at the end it said that “System Restore did not complete successfully. An unspecified error occurred during System Restore. (0x800700b7)”

The only option at that point was to close the error window, and restart the system — which is what I did.  However, the system restarted much faster this time, and once it got to the Windows Desktop, there was another status window displayed from System Restore; but this time it said “System Restore completed successfully.  The system has been restored to 8/12/2019 9:00:50 AM. ”

And sure enough, when I went into Windows Update -> Update History -> Installed Updates, there was no longer any trace there of KB4512488.  So the System Restore worked!  Even more importantly though, once that update got removed the system returned to its normal perky high-performance self.  Disk activity was back to averaging around 5% or so — at least when the system was idle.

Since this is a client’s computer — and not a test system — I can’t really go back and try to recreate the problem to see if it’s repeatable or not.  But I just wanted to document the experience here in case anyone else runs into a similar issue with this update.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Kirsty

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I’ll second this report since it exactly describes my experience with a client computer that was unresponsive starting yesterday morning.  The Win 10 Dell computer updated itself and rebooted sometime during the night.  In the morning she came back to a login screen and an unresponsive computer, especially in Outlook.  It took several restarts and lots of waiting before the 100% disk activity and higher than normal CPU usage died down.  Then, another restart and the computer seemed to be back to normal.  I did not have the opportunity to investigate further.

As a side note, the customer tasked me with getting her a powerful refurbished PC that can run Windows 7.  She’s fed up with all the issues she’s had with Win 10 and doesn’t care about Win 7’s End of Life as long as things worked like they used to.  She just wants a computer that works and doesn’t interrupt her workday.  She’s uses Outlook and is a very advanced Word user who prepares large and complicated documents.  Up until Win 10, she never had any issues with her computer.  Since Win 10 it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride with no system stability to speak of.  She’s also fed up with later versions of office and had me return her to Office 2010, which in her words was the last usable version before features she uses started disappearing.

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Seeing the same behaviour on an Azure-hosted single-VM RemoteApp instance, but on Server 2019 that has been running like a champ prior.

 

1306 and 1296 at every connection attempt.

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Actually, mine turned out to be resolved by disabling IPv6 on the NIC. Good luck out there!

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hey, Anonymous, thanks for sharing your experience!

I just double-checked and both my GW and CB have IPv6 disabled (as I expected).

Your comment, however, made me wonder if possibly the Aug 2019 Rollup re-activated it? I have two other non-production servers which I had also updated and one of them does have IPv6 enabled — but I can’t say for sure it was disabled prior.

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Tom-R wrote:

She then called me. We powered the system back on. And eventually, after about 3 to 4 times longer boot time than usual, we were able to get the Windows Desktop. But once again, things quickly started slowing down. I was able to bring up Task Manager. CPU usage was normal (around 15 to 20%), and memory usage was minimal. But the disk activity was pegged solidly at 100%. I tried to drill down with Resource Monitor to figure out what processes were behind the high disk activity. But before I could get any useful info, the system bogged down so severely that I couldn’t even get Resource Monitor or Task Manager to respond any more. Performance deteriorated quickly in just a matter of minutes after getting the Desktop.

The easiest way to check this is to use the Details tab in Task Manager, Right click on any column heading, click Choose Columns and enable the 6 I/O columns. Those are then easily sorted to find top culprits.

Unlike the clunky performance monitor, this is done in a smaller process already running at higher than normal priority, increasing the chance of successfully diagnosing an overload. Nice little trick to practice in general.

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I just created a windows 10 pro 1903 on a pc,
setup rdp acces all works fine,

then i installed the KB4512488, this make me enter the machine once through the RPD client and after i close the conection not the session, and try to reconect the system freez in the login screen in the RDP session.

also if i do a local login on the windows 10 pro, after i have had acces through RDP the system take long time to enter, like 15 min or so. normal is 10 sec.
after a reboot i can enter from RDP once more, that all.

If i don’t use RDP i can enter the system local within 10 sec.

no IP6 is active.

so the issue is the KB 4512488 break the RDP login

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I just installed the August update on a 1903 and RDP works fine.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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