Certain computers on the same Lan, connected over a WAN via Remote desktop, to Server 2003 freeze every 2-3 minutes when idle. It also freezes also nearly every time the remote session is dropped to the task bar when another application becomes the primary application used and RDP is running in the background. Upon freezing, in about one minute, it will drop the connection, and then reconnect, with the above error message. This problem does not happen if the remote session is in constant use, which is not pratical for our application, as it needs to sit for sometimes up to one hour idle. All the time out settings have been maxed, but the connections won't stay alive. Two computers on the LAN have less of a problem than the three others which disconnect far more frequently. They all go through the same linksys router. The others can sometimes sit for 30-60 minutes without disconnecting. One is even an XP Home machine, and the other a 2000 box, both run better than our other 3 XP PRO machines in terms of disconnection problems. We increased bandwidth on the WAN, but no change, and DSL reports tell us we are only using less than 5% of our bandwith and still having problems. To further confuse the matter, VNC and PCanywhere never have any disconnects, whether to the server 2003 or other workstations on the LAN at the same site as the server location, going through the same router on both ends. We have checked our DSL connection, and there are no problems on either end. We are not running a VPN right now, and wonder if this would improve performance or not make a difference. We have disabled firewalls, and this does not make a difference. We have rewired our LAN but there are no connection issues there. While we have this problem mostly from this office, we also have it from other remote sites -- some sites are worse than others in freezing or dropping connections, and other locations have no problems at all. The only thing I have not tired is a known good computer that stays connected at another site most of the other time (only some disconnections), such as a my laptop, connecting it from the site we have the most trouble.
Other things we have tried: We have changed the experience to downgrade the speed of the connection, but this has not helped. We took the screen saver off the server remote desktop setting to set it to none when it was set to 10 minutes.
