What else can be changed to resolve being unable to complete a Remote Desktop connection?

Question

I have an older Lenovo M78 Desktop (ThinkCentre)-Type 10BU. It has an AMD A4-6300B processor with an AMD Radeon 8370D integrated display adapter.

It started life as a Windows 8 Pro PC. It was later upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro. Sometime right before the free deadline I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro. I used the machine for testing Windows 8 early on and it basically sat in the closet until recently. I needed to use it for testing some PCI hardware.

A few weeks ago I upgraded it from Windows 10 15xx something to 1903. I reran Windows Update several times and it reports as up to date.

I then tried to remote into it from a Windows 10 1809 and a different Windows 10 1903 computer with the same failed results.

Connecting to the box requests the credentials normally. They are accepted and the client machine reports it is configuring the connection. Then the client opens a RDP window, but the window is all black. The host screen switches to its normal lock screen. It takes about 60 seconds until an error dialog appears:

Remote Desktop Connection
(X) Your Remote Desktop Services session has ended, possibly for one of the following reasons:

The administrator has ended the session.
An error occurred while the connection was being established.
A network problem occured.

For help solving the problem, see "Remote Desktop" in Help and Support

I upgraded the AMD Catalyst drivers to the most recent version. The Lenovo Vantage program, current version, updated the network driver and a few other hardware items.

I have tried and double check the following:

• The three PC's are on the same unmanaged switch
• The credentials I am using have administrator rights. It is the main user of the machine.
• The firewalls are turned off on the host
• The host is set to Allow remote connections to this computer.
• Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication is NOT checked.
• Turned the firewall off on the client
• The host has no trouble RDPing into the client
• The host is not on a domain
• The 1809 client is on a domain the 1903 client is not on a domain
• The 1809 client has no trouble connecting to the other 1903 machine
• While the black client window is active, it can be resized without problem
• Hitting ctrl-shift-esc in the black client window does not bring up task manager on the host
• I've tried various display configurations (800x600 through full display) on the RDP client
• I've tried various color depths on the RDP client
• I've tried various display resolutions on the host
• All the computers have display scaling set to 100%
• The 1809 client has a dual 1920 x 1080 Asus display system (HDMI).
• The 1903 client has a single 1920 x 1080 Asus display (HDMI)
• The 1903 host has a single 1920 x 1080 Asus display (VGA connection)
• I know I remoted in when it was a Windows 8.x box, I don't know if it worked after the first Windows 10 upgrade in 2016.

Update: 6/14/19

• The SmartCard and SmartCard Device Enumeration services, were set to manual. I set them to disabled and rebooted. - No change in the issue.
• In the host's Event application log when connecting the Desktop Window Manager logs a 9027 information event "The Desktop Window Manager has registered the session port." This appears to be normal as other hosts have the same entry when connected.
• In the host's Event system log there are several information events for UserModePowerService. This is a Lenovo Power manager process that resets the policy scheme, from a GUID to and identical GUID. Terminating the process and reconnecting makes the message go away, but the problem persists.

• The client's RDP Advanced settings are set to: Server authentication: Connect and don't warn me. Changing that to warn prompts the normal certificate issue when connecting. The Connect from anywhere settings are the defaults to Automatically detect a remote gateway. We do not have one.

• Enabling the default administrator account and using it to log in did not change the symptom.

• Entirely removing the AMD drivers, leaving the the video display adapter to Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, did not change the symptoms.

  • Removed the Norton control center - no change
  • Removed all of the Lenovo specific utilities that were older than 2019.