Windows 10 V1903 black screen with Remote Desktop

Anonymous

I upgraded my secondary machine from 1809 to 1903. When I access it now using Remote Desktop all I get is a black screen in the RDP windows. I then upgraded my primary machine to 1903 hoping that would help, but no. Fortunately I also have GoToAssist installed so I was able to log into the secondary machine that way and checked for updates, still no help. Finally I reverted it back to 1809 and Remote Desktop once again works. I could keep using GoToAssist but RDP over my local LAN is much faster.

As long as this version as been (more or less) gold before going public, I can't possibly be the first one with this issue. It's no big deal to me that my secondary is running 1809, it's primarily a file server, but upgrading would be nice.

Granted, that secondary system is an older Core2 Quad, but at 3.3GHz and 8GB of memory and a SSD, it's plenty fast enough. I suppose I could try a different video card, but it shouldn't be necessary for a feature update.

Anyone have some insight into why RDP isn't working. I've already been through all the "guesses". :-)

*Modified title for accuracy*

*Original title: Windows 10 1903 (May update) black screen with Remote Desktop*

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Workaround reported here is to set the group policy to force RD sessions to use XDDM instead of WDDM:

Gpedit.msc: Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Remote Desktop Services->Remote Desktop Session Host->Remote Session Environment

Moderator's note:

If Group Policy method doesn't works, open administrative Command Prompt, type this, and press Enter key:

REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services” /v “fEnableWddmDriver” /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Microsoft has also released update KB4512941, which addresses this issue:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4512941/windows-10-update-kb4512941

The update page mentions:

Addresses an issue that displays a black screen when you use Remote Desktop to connect to a machine running Windows 10, version 1903.

You can install KB4512941 and this would resolve the issue for you.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

In my case all Intel G41 drivers currently available, from Intel (2009), and from Microsoft (2013), showed black screen with RDP, even though they are Ok with the monitor connected to the PC.

So I've decided to use the "Microsoft Basic Graphics" driver, shown in the compatibility list when I tried to update the driver manually, and now RDP works.

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148 additional answers

Anonymous

2019-09-19T21:16:49+00:00

KB 4512941 does not fix the issue for me. And disabling WDDM in GPO settings does not help for me either (tested on several affected PCs). I found that the only way to get it to work again on the new 1903 version it to do a fresh install of the release that has the fix (18362.329 or later).

Is there really no way of fixing this without having to reinstall Windows? :-(

I'm speculating here, but it sounds like whatever you updated from has some file--either a driver or a service--that conflicts and gets carried over to the updated version but that doesn't exist in the fresh install.

It shouldn't matter, but try disabling WDDM also on the Remote Desktop host.

Also, go into Display Scaling and try replacing the drop-down value with a custom scale factor. You can even use the same factor you chose in the drop-down, i.e., replace drop-down 125% with custom 125%. That fixes the text blurring that Win 10 causes. Apparently it does so by changing how Win 10 does hi-def scaling. It's possible that such a change could also affect RDP problems caused by video drivers. -- But keep in mind that that's just a guess on my part.
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Anonymous

2019-09-19T10:53:01+00:00

KB 4512941 does not fix the issue for me. And disabling WDDM in GPO settings does not help for me either (tested on several affected PCs). I found that the only way to get it to work again on the new 1903 version it to do a fresh install of the release that has the fix (18362.329 or later).

Is there really no way of fixing this without having to reinstall Windows? :-(
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Anonymous

2019-09-11T01:15:16+00:00

After posting the above I later tried Daviddgz's fix and so far it seems to be working.

I say "so far", because a variety of things seemed to work but then gradually didn't.

It seemed to work okay changing the setting on the client PC, but I also decided to change it on the host PC "just in case".

We have a lot of Dell Opti 380's and 780's, and I haven't tried RDP into any of the others yet since making the change, so "we'll see ...." (Different form factors might have some different chips.)
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