RDP: Some applications take a long time to paint on initial load

Question

When remoting into my Win 10 Pro machine from my Win 7 Pro laptop, certain applications such as Chrome, VSCode, Slack, and (until the April Windows 10 update) Edge, take a long time to paint the first time they are opened. Once they are loaded, I can create all the instances I like of these apps until the last instance is closed, at which point the app will need to "load" again. I've observed this behavior both via an SSH tunnel and over direct RDP.

During this loading period, the window appears entirely white except for the title bar which draws and functions normally. This takes around 10 seconds. Other applications such as Visual Studio 2017 and Notepad++ are not affected.

The heavily graphical nature of these applications makes me think it has something to do with GPU acceleration, as most problem apps appear to be Electron or WebKit-based apps. This isn't always the case, as the Windows Photos app behaves similarly, though it stays black instead of white during loading. The Windows Mail app also misbehaves, displaying its logo on blue during loading.

This behavior also isn't consistent; there are some rare occasions where everything works normally! This usually lasts for a day or so before reverting. This most recently happened after I'd updated the driver for my primary video card but hadn't restarted the machine, which, again, makes me think of GPU acceleration.

I quickly observed my GPU performance while loading VSCode. My primary PCIe card, an Nvidia 980Ti, hovered between 0% and 3%. The integrated GPU, an Intel 630 which drives my two secondary monitors, stayed at 0%. Interestingly, the Performance tab of Task Manager also took a long time to draw the first time I switched to it.

Answer 1

After the April update, I noticed that 3D Vision wasn't set up properly, prompting me to go through the setup wizard again. This coincided with my problem mysteriously disappearing, so this got me thinking that perhaps stereoscopic 3D might have something to do with it. I turned stereoscopic 3D off and tried remoting in again this morning - no loading time delays! I'll continue to experiment, but this might be the answer.

It also makes sense that there wouldn't be much information available online for this; in the Venn diagram of people who use 3D Vision and people who Remote Desktop into that same machine, there probably isn't much overlap.

UPDATE: Rubber Ducking comes through again. Just by explaining things for this post, I was able to determine with a fairly high confidence that stereoscopic 3D was indeed the culprit. Hope this helps someone else in the distant future.