Upgrading to Windows 11 24H2 causes Royal TS remote desktop connections to Windows 7 machines not to show graphics correctly

Questions Royal TS (for Windows)
1

Basically, when RDP’ing from Royal TS 6 or 7, the machine I’m connecting to doesn’t display the graphics correctly, usually only displaying one block of the display. Here’s an example:

image
image3240×1600 25.4 KB

Using the Remote Desktop app from the Windows Store does not show this issue.

For more information, see here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2086656/upgrading-to-windows-11-24h2-causes-remote-desktop

Here’s a blurb from that page:

"After having upgraded Windows 11 to 24H2, the remote desktop connections to machines that use Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008R2 do not show graphic content correctly.

Returning to the previous Windows 11 version (23H2) has resolved the problem.

No problems with remote desktop connections to other machines with more recent operating systems. Unfortunately, the above-mentioned Windows 7 machine is “special”, as it is used to control some very old industrial system control and it is not upgradable."

And the possible reason it is occurring:

"It looks like mstsc in Windows 11 24H2 no longer understands bitmap updates, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-rdpbcgr/d681bb11-f3b5-4add-b092-19fe7075f9e3, that contain multiple rectangles. It seems to draw the first rectangle (maybe) and ignore the rest. It’s not clear whether this change is intentional.

FreeRDP updated their code to deal with this by restricting all bitmap updates to a single rectangle: https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/pull/10455"

Any help with getting this working in Royal TS would be appreciated.

Thanks,

John R

2

Hi John,

in Royal TS we currently offer two plugins for RDP:

  1. MS RDP which is based on the Microsoft RDP ActiveX control (a Microsoft 1st party component which is shipped in Windows). To find out if the issue is related to the ActiveX or Royal TS, you can try to connect to that machine using Microsoft’s own Remote Desktop Connection Manager (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rdcman) which is also using the ActiveX.

  2. If FreeRDP addressed this issue in a newer update, you can download the latest build of wfreerdp.exe and configure the new executable in the plugin settings of the FreeRDP plugin. If all the CLI arguments are still the same, switching to a newer version should work just fine.

Regards,
Stefan

3

Looks like switching to FreeRDP as the default, under the plugin settings fixed it:

4

Glad to hear that! It’s a workaround at least. It would still be interesting if you see the same issue with MS’ RDCMan. I’m also wondering what else is different in you system because we tested 24H2 ourselves and couldn’t see any of the issues you describe.

5

We are also getting the same issue in Windows 11 and RoyalTS 7.3.50102. Workaround using the FREERDP plugin, but performance not as good.

Normal Remote Connection outside of RoyalTS is fine, its only when using RoyalTS

6

Hi Steve,

thanks for letting us know. Could you reproduced the issue using RDCMan as well (as mentioned above)? If so, you can use the Windows Feedback Hub to let Microsoft know about the issue.

Regards,
Stefan