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I'm using a RemoteApp connection from Windows 7, to a Windows Server 2012 machine. Very often the application name on the taskbar will not update, when the actual program window title area changes. I found this Microsoft article that details this apparently known issue:
Symptoms
When working with a Terminal Server RemoteApp connection, the name of the application in the taskbar does not appear as expected. For Example, when connected to the application Product Studio, the name listed in the taskbar appears as (Remote):
Your expected result would be that when connected to the application Product Studio, the name listed in the taskbar appears as Application Name (Remote).
Cause
This issue occurs because the local taskbar does not receive the EVENT_OBJECT_NAMECHANGE event from the system due to a timing issue. The EVENT_OBJECT_NAMECHANGE is needed to update the taskbar title information.
Resolution
Note: The issue does not affect how the application works. You can safely ignore this issue. To work around this issue, the taskbar can be refreshed by closing and then re-starting the application.
The proposed resolution above of closing and restarting the app is obviously not ideal, and anyways doesn't seem to work. Is there any way to "force" the taskbar to update, via an AHK script perhaps? Or any other possible workaround for this?
wysiwyg
Posted 2017-05-02T19:04:15.767
Reputation: 2 313
Thanks @Daniel Keymer. That unfortunately doesn't seem to work for me. I even tried killing explorer and re-running it, but that also didn't work. So far the only way I've found to get it to update is to disconnect the RemoteApp connection (leaving the programs running server-side) and re-connect. Can you elaborate on the alternative method you mentioned? – wysiwyg – 2017-05-03T03:38:27.497
1OK. If the Ctrl+Alt+End method doesn't work, I have my doubts restarting
rdpshell.exewill either. Still - in order to do that, you need to run code or a command/task on the RemoteApp server to kill therdpshell.exetask. For testing whether it will work, the easiest way is to remotely launch Task Manager (press Ctrl+Alt+End as before, then select Task Manager from the secure desktop menu), findrdpshell.exein the process list, and terminate it. It should restart automatically, but if not you can manually relaunch from the File menu. It will update your local windows when it restarts. – Daniel Keymer – 2017-05-03T18:13:09.580Just realized, you're talking about the REMOTE secure desktop. When I hit Ctrl Alt End, even with the remote app in focus, it shows my local secure desktop, not the remote. Any idea why that would be? – wysiwyg – 2017-05-03T21:40:06.840
1Are you running a nested session (i.e. full-screen RDP from machine A to machine B, which is running RemoteApp to machine C)? That's the only case I can think of where -End (as opposed to -Del) won't go through to the remote session - or at least, not the right remote session. If that's the case, running AHK on machine B is probably the least painful way of doing this, but I've also managed to get it to work by running osk.exe on that middle machine and entering the key combination with that. Just for testing purposes, though - you don't want to have to use it every time... – Daniel Keymer – 2017-05-04T17:44:54.623
You're absolutely right, I was doing it from a nested session; should've realized that. It works fine when I'm on machine A. So i guess the best solution would be to have a script with a hotkey just send Ctrl-Alt-End followed by Esc? Thanks! – wysiwyg – 2017-05-04T19:26:11.220
It's the easiest workaround to implement, for sure; whether you use a script depends on your situation, but it sounds like hotkey scripts fit into your workflow. You might need to leave a small delay (maybe half a second - but it depends how fast the RemoteApp server is) between the Ctrl+Alt+End and Esc in order for the secure desktop screen to have time to initialize and process the Esc input. Best of luck :) – Daniel Keymer – 2017-05-05T23:35:17.580