RDP Disconnects and Loss of Work

Use Terminal server manager under administrative tools to see the previous sessions that are still logged in and connect to them.
Occasionally, it will create another session rather than contiue the previous, depending on where you are connecting from for the next session.

If a standard user is having this issue how would they ensure they are going to get back to the session that they were doing work on?  

I'm not sure what you mean by standard user, as the user that uses remote desktop to log on to a server needs to either be an administrator or part of the remote desktop users group as far as I'm aware.

In order to take back the session from the server, after logging on:

Start > All Programs > Administrative tools > Terminal Services > 'Terminal Services Manager'.
Click on the root of folders on the left, then in the main body of the window, select the 'users' tab.  From there right click the session that you want to connect to and click 'Connect'.

You could use the TSCON command to connect directly to the session, but you would need to know the session ID or the session name before hand, and that means finding it out before you get disconnected.  In my opinion, it's easier just to do the above.

Hope this helps you.

By standard user I mean someone that does not have elevated access such as an Administrator, it is not possible for users to access terminal services manager only Administrators so this will not work. I need a solution to prevent this from happening in the first place. We are loosing hours of work when getting kicked off that has not been saved. Thanks

when you logs in second time do you do with same username  e.g. administrator that was disconnected last time.

also while logged in after disconnection if you open "task manager" and tab "users"
can you see last session listed there if yes you can right click and connect to that session.
but am not sure if this only works for server 2003 and server 2008 does't support this

Pmicorp,

It seems that either I am not making myself clear, or you are misunderstanding me.  Hopefully I can clear a few things up which will go towards answering your question.

Firstly, standard users are not able to log on to servers by default unless they are an administrator or part of the Remote Desktop Users group for that server.
If you say that a user is logging in to that server then they are NOT just a standard user.  This is unless you (or anyone else) have explicitly allowed standard users to log in (which I would never recommend if this is a server).

Secondly, if they are logging in to the server via terminal services, then regardless of the privileges they have after logging in, terminal services manager is available to be opened (as far as my testing has proved).  If this is not the case - let me know what error message the user gets when following the instructions I gave above on opening Terminal services manager.

Thirdly, you are not losing hours of work when a session gets disconnected.  That session is still open and the hours of work is still available to connect to again if you follow the instructions I gave above on how to connect to the session that the user was disconnected from.

As for a solution...
Disconnections happen all the time if the network connectivity between the terminal services client and the terminal services server is cut (i.e. the user’s computer and the server).  For example, I suspect that the user might either be connecting over wireless, or over a VPN connection via the internet - both of which can be quite unstable.  The solution there to prevent being disconnected is to improve the stability of the network between the client and the server.
If you want to connect to the same session again, then the user needs to use the 'Query session' command from the command line before the session disconnects and record the session ID.  If the session disconnects, use the 'Tscon' command from the command line listing the recorded session ID.  Details on how to use that command is here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770988(WS.10).aspx

I believe I have answered your questions of ‘Why is this new session being created?’ and ‘How do I get the old session back’ to the best of my (or possibly anyone else’s) ability with the information that I understand given by you above.

If I have misunderstood anything or you think additional information may help you find an answer to a different question you have, please let me know.

Hope all this is helpful to you.

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 0 points for PMICORP's comment http:/Q_27328065.html#36710310

for the following reason:

After reading a number of articles I was directed to the solution stated in the post.

Chad,

Your answer you gave above is not relevant to your problem and does not answer the question.

That setting is set to 'Yes' by default and affects users that 'log off' from a terminal services session and not when they become 'disconnected'.  Besides which, new sessions will continue to be created regardless of this setting being set to 'Yes' or 'No', and you will still need to reconnect to an original session in order to continue working on it once disconnected.

I believe I took the time out to answer this query fully, giving a correct and informative answer.

The author has since not commented on my answer as being right or wrong and come up with an answer that is in no way relevant to the original question.

My objection is based on the assumption that points should be awarded for correctly answering a question and contend the author’s decision not to assign points.

I don't see how you can say that my answer isn't relevant to my question.  Before, when a session was disconnected, the server deleted the current state of the RDP connection. Now it doesn't.  My users have no need to use tscon to get the desired results. That means your answer is not a solution to the stated issue.