Ever since I upgraded my personal and development machines to Vista, I have been having problems connecting to non Vista machines over the internet using Terminal Services.  I could connect and log in no problem, but they were incredibly slow.  I could move windows around and then I would have to wait about 20 seconds and the screen to update.  Now I am quite familiar with slow connections and update lag, but this was different.  In normal slow situations the screen would re-draw itself, 100 pixel at a time block by block, but what I was seeing would not update at all and then after about 10 to 20 seconds the entire screen would just update.

Well all of those problems are behind me because I have finally found the answer.  I figured I would post the solution here for two reasons #1 it's a lot easier for me to come back here and reference it, (I know that sounds selfish) #2 I know a lot of our users / clients use terminal services, and I can only assume that a vista upgrade has happened or is in a lot of peoples future (either by choice or necessity).

RDP 6.0, the version that currently ships with Vista, has an auto tuning feature that has at least in our environment (and many others by the looks of things from a simple Google search) has been known to cause connection slowness or choppiness.

To get around this the solution is to simply disable the new auto tuning feature of RDP, this basically just makes it work like the prior version used to.

You have to get to a cmd prompt with Administrative Privlidges.

The easiest way to do this is to type cmd into the vista search box, and when the CMD program comes up in the list of available program shortcuts, right click on it and select "Run As Administrator".  This will put you in a cmd prompt with Administrative Privileges.

Here comes the part you have all been waiting for

at the cmd prompt type the following

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

and then hit enter.  Once the command completes you will see an "OK", after this you should be able to connect using RDP with no problems. 

If you ever want to turn the Auto Tuning features back on just run the same command, changing the last part to "enabled" instead of "disabled".  (I know I just had to make sure I said something about it.)


-Adam