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Win7 RDP stops when moving away from RDP window

When I connect to a vm running win7 using RDP from a win7 workstation, I am unable to minimize that window, close it, or resize it without losing access. If I do any of these things, I can still see the remote desktop but cannot do anything until I close the RDP session and start a new one.

Can someone explain why this is happening and how I can change this behavior.
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John
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Look in RDP Settings before connecting and click on Expand Options (lower left).

Check the Experience Options and status of Reconnect flag as well as the pull down options.
Check the Advanced tab and the status of the Connect from anywhere settings.

I don't know why RPD should drop because you move away. Such does not happen to me.
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ASKER

Hi,

In the Experience section, I have;

Detect connection quality automatically
Persistent bitmap caching checked
Reconnect if the connection is dropped checked
Does this happen only connecting to a VM or to other non-VM computers as well?
I think (but cannot confirm at this moment) this happens only when connecting to vms.
I really cannot think why RDP would do this.

Check to be sure your virtual machines are on the same subnet as your host machine. Networking may possibly be an issue.
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I guess you are not describing your action appropriately. If you close a RDP window, the window is closed, and you gain back access only if you reconnect, of course.
You cannot resize a RDP window (with the default client).

So what are you using or doing in fact?
I can describe what ever you need me to and will be happy to do so.

Closing an RDP session is simple, it's closed, I need to start a new one, no issues.
However, when I minimize or resize an RDP session, I can no longer control the remote, I can see it but nothing works and I need to restart the session.

Yes, this is from one lan segment to another but other than this issue, nothing else is being odd.
RDP retries connecting when it looses the connection. A window in suspension is usually the result you see if the connection gets lost.

A RDP session does not exchange data while minimized AFAIK, so I suppose the device connecting both LAN segments is the culprit - no traffic => internal session states change because of timeout because of no traffic. This is well-known from stateful firewalls, which keep session tables to allow replies on otherwise restricted or denied traffic, e.g. the Internet.
No, what I am saying is not that it doesn't transfer while minimized but that when made full screen again, nothing responds anymore. The only way to get back to the remote is to start a new session.
Exactly what I've described above! If you look at the clock in the RDP session after restoring its window, I'm certain you will see a past time.
Yes but, this happens instantly. The second I resize the window or minimize it, I lose control of it and have to start a new session.
That is not "Exactly what I've described above!" then ... I can only guess, and it sounds like an issue with the graphics drivers. But to make sure the RDP session is not terminating the connection prematurly, could you run TcpView from www.sysinternals.com or something alike, start RDP, minimize, and then view in TcpView whether the RDP connection is closed?
Yes, the connection remains open when I've minimized RDP to that server. I can see it using a port monitoring program.

This time, when I reopened the RDP window, it was all black. Sometimes it's black, sometimes it's the normal window but I can't control anything anymore and every once in a while, it acts normally.
If that would not happen instantly, my bets were 100% on a firewall or similar device timing the session out without sending a TCP RST.

We might have to focus on the VM part. Tell us more about which type of VM that is (VMware, MS Hyper-V, VirtualBox, ...).
ESXi 5.1, win7.
No firewall on the machines which are doing any blocking until the win7 remote is doing something odd.
No issues on the workstation connecting to the above win7 when connecting to other remotes.
Is this just from one PC to one VM or multiple PCs to one VM or Multiple PCs to multiple VMs (happening to some or all?)? Can you delete your RDP shortcut and recreate it and see if that fixes it?
minimizing/restoring the window has little or nothing to do with rdp but everything to do with your graphics subsystem. what is the o/s on your computer and the graphics adapter type? Also what version of the rdp client are you using?
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I don't know why this worked. All I can think of is something 'stuck' so when changing the performance setting, the problem went away.
If I find the specific reason, I'll update this question.