Diagnose remote desktop freezes in Windows 7 when no BSOD?

Posted by Paul Smith on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Paul Smith
Published on 2011-01-05T03:59:55Z Indexed on 2011/01/05 4:55 UTC
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Okay, I'm getting no joy from Asus or Microsoft on this, so hoping for some clues on how to narrow down the cause.

I have very frequent OS freezes, always & only when running Remote Destkop Client (mstsc) in Windows 7 x64. I never have a bluescreen, and there is never a minidump. The display & input just freezes -- no keyboard, no mouse, and sound will just continue the last wavelength if any. So far, I can't find a way to trap the hang given that there's no bluescreen; advanced startup & recovery settings for system failure are "Write an event" checked, "Automatically restart" checked, and "Kernel memory dump".

I've updated to the lasted BIOS, and tried a few different graphics drivers, both generic & ATI. I've also tried disabling Aero, and everything about the remote desktop experience (incrementally unchecked every box in the mstsc -> options -> experience tab), even disabled/unplugged external monitor to make sure it wasn't a dual-monitor issue.

My specs are:

Asus G73jh notebook
8GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series graphics
    (recently tried driver versions 8.791.0.0, 8.801.0.0)
American Megatrends G73jh.211 BIOS (7/27/2010)
Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Windows Memory Diagnostic passed all of the following at least 3 times with no errors:

MATS+
INVC
LRAND
Stride6
WMATS+    
WINVC

This notebook is better than most at removing heat (laudable vent design), so I'm not inclined to suspect thermal causes (especially since running 1080p video for hours has never caused a freeze, but mstsc does, reliably, within 5 minutes to an hour).

This did seem to start happening after a Windows Update, but I've since reverted every patch applied since a week before the first occurrence, with no joy. (And I'd only had the PC for a couple weeks before that, so it could have been chance + less actual time spent remoting at the beginning.)

I'm at my wits end, and I bought this laptop primarily as a remote terminal client (go figure, right?) Any ideas on how to identify the cause of this?

Thanks!

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