{"id":113,"date":"2026-11-03T11:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T00:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/?p=113"},"modified":"2026-11-03T11:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T00:38:16","slug":"i-recently-had-a-server-2016-which-i-could-not-rdp-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/11\/03\/i-recently-had-a-server-2016-which-i-could-not-rdp-to\/","title":{"rendered":"I recently had a Server 2016 which I could not RDP to"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I knew that everything was set right but first a bit of debugging. Luckily i had SSH access:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First a good old fashioned hard reboot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">shutdown \/r \/f \/t 0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Then some tests:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Check if the RDP Port (3389) is Listening:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To verify if the system network layer is actively hosting the standard RDP port, query your active network statistics:<br>cmd<br>netstat -ano | findstr &#8220;3389&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">look for &#8220;LISTENING&#8221; on the port<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"3\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Check the Windows RDP Service Status<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want to know if the underlying system service\u2014TermService (Remote Desktop Services)\u2014is running, use the service controller utility:<br>cmd<br>sc query TermService<br>Use code with caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What to look for: Look at the STATE line in the returned text. It should say RUNNING.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"4\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Check if RDP is Enabled in the Registry<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes the service is running, but the Windows property itself is turned off. You can read the registry configuration directly from the command line:<br>cmd<br>reg query &#8220;HKLM\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Terminal Server&#8221; \/v fDenyTSConnections<br>Use code with caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What to look for:<br>\u2022 0x0 means RDP is Enabled (connections are allowed).<br>\u2022 0x1 means RDP is Disabled (connections are denied).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When all of that failed this fixed it for me. I actually later had access at the console but this can also be done via command prompt in SSH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the issue persists, you can try reinstalling the Remote Desktop Services role. To do this, follow these steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Open Server Manager.<br>Click on Add Roles and Features.<br>Click Next until you reach the Server Roles page.<br>Select Remote Desktop Services and click Next.<br>Follow the prompts to complete the installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">just tick the first box in options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">or via commandline:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Install-WindowsFeature -Name Remote-Desktop-Services, RDS-RD-Server, RDS-Licensing, RDS-Connection-Broker, RDS-Web-Access -IncludeManagementTools -Restart<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of the commandline above assumes you have the shell opened as administrator account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I knew that everything was set right but first a bit of debugging. Luckily i had SSH access: First a good old fashioned hard reboot: shutdown \/r \/f \/t 0 Then some tests: Check if the RDP Port (3389) is Listening: To verify if the system network layer is actively hosting the standard RDP port, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abmservermanagement.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}