RDP connection from Windows 7/8 to Server 2012 is slow
I recently installed Windows Server 2012 for development purposes at our office and noticed immediately that connecting via RDP is slow. It can take 5-10 seconds to connect at times, where as connecting to any of our Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 boxes takes at most 1-3 seconds.
At first, I chalked this up to the box itself needing a driver update or something, but just yesterday, I installed Windows 8 on my Desktop PC and connecting from home to that Windows Server 2012 machine produces the same result. There is a 3-4 second pause at "securing remote connection" and then again at "configuring remote session".
I don't see any warnings in the event log, and once connected, there do not appear to be any performance issues. Is there a known problem with RDP connections from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows Server 2012 systems? Anything I should look for?
I experienced the same issue and resolved it by adding the registry setting referred to here.
- Open RegEdit on the Windows Server machine.
- Navigate to this registry key in the tree on the left:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
- Right-click on the right side, and add a new DWORD (32-bit) Value
- Set the value name to DisableTaskOffload and the value data to 1
- Reconnect to the Server via RDP (to a new session) and your performance should be normal.
This has happened to me before. I solved it by going into the Remote Desktop Connection -> Experience tab and ensuring I didn't have "Detect connection quality automatically" selected. I also unchecked everything under "Allow the following".