I upgraded my machine to windows 7 about 6 months ago and everything has been fine, except all of a sudden today I can no longer remote desktop to it. When attempting to, it displays Welcome... and then Logging off...and closes the window. The following events are logged when I attempt to RDP into the box: Application Log Event ID 9003: The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because a composited theme is not in use Application Log Event ID 9009: The Desktop Window Manager has exited with code (0x40010004) Application Warning Event ID 1530: Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards. DETAIL - 1 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-265498398-244809081-3842272739-1001: Process 916 (\Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-265498398-244809081-3842272739-1001\Printers\DevModePerUser I have rebooted multiple times, tried different logins, tried turning off WDM and even uninstalled all the updates I installed earlier this week. Nothing has worked. After going through the first few pages of multiple google search attempts, and coming up empty handed, I figured I would give the technet forums a try.

A. Yes, I use RDP on the machine every day and have since I installed roughly 6 months ago. It has worked flawlessly from install date until now. B. Yes, as above. This machine is used more remotely then it is at the console. C. I have tried from multiple machines including an old W2K client with no change in behavior. Whether the client is set to dial up or LAN as far as user experience goes, there is no change. For whats it worth the printer related error went away when trying to connect from the W2k client, which was a vm with no printers installed. Same behavior, Welcome...for about 5 seconds then Logging off with the event ID's 9003 and 9009. I work as a Network Analyst so I by all means don't know everything about these desktop operating systems, but you can rule out the beginner mistakes ;). Something has gone wrong here and as far as my searching goes, its not a common occurrence.

Hi guys, Thank you very much for the replies but unfortunately the issue persists. I will try to answer all of your suggestions: lonewolf: - I have tried with just about every variation on the client, including with an old base-level windows 2000 client (pre-update) and the same symptoms appear every time - I have tried creating new accounts, both admin and power user, but no change when trying to login as either - The machine is a workgroup machine with the windows firewall disabled, ruling out local/domain accounts. There are no other firewalls on the machine. When connecting via RDP, the connection is successful until the loading point where it logs me out due to a WDM error/crash. This is definitely not firewall related. - Process monitor replaces my task manager on all my machines at work and at home :-) I can see what I need to see, and all the values exist and are accessible by my account...no issues pop up there. - There are no printers installed on this system, and even with the spooler service stopped the problem persists - Removing all "special effects" and even killing the DWM service before connecting does not help - I wish it would have helped too, I really enjoy Windows 7 but if I have to format this after only 6 months of use I will be going back to the tried and true XP as RDP reliability means much more to me then fancy windows effects :( Dale: - thank you for the suggestion, the network driver is up to date and is the latest available. with thumbnails completely disabled across the system, the issue persists. also with aero features turned off, using a basic "classic" desktop, the issue persists Currently I am using pcAnywhere as a temporary solution, any more suggestions on this matter would be appreciated but if I can't get anywhere by the end of the week I will reload back to XP...I find it quite a shame that these event ID's and the WDM error code are so poorly documented and that it looks like going back to an 8~ year old OS is my best bet...

I have a whole batch of Dell blades that were running Windows 7 64bit just fine... Then after running Windows update they now all exhibit this behavior! I've been googling around trying to find a solution. Certainly tried all of the things in the tread to no avail. I agree with one of the other posters on this thread... I think this is a problem which is a lot bigger than the moderator realizes (or anyone else at msft). Probably they will start seeing a lot of cases soon - but it takes awhile before the results are available for the masses. I'll keep pinging away on my own systems. If I can narrow down the update or registry change which caused this problem I'll be sure to post back my findings on this page! Thanks Nick, let me know if you find anything. I am also STILL working on trying to find a solution for this, using pcAnywhere in the mid term but its horrible in comparison to RDP for my uses...