Mouse cursor jumps around when using RDP

Question

We have over 350 users complaining that their mouse cursor keeps jumping around when typing. It seems like it's happening when the protocol is starved for bandwith, but I'm not quite sure yet.

If it only was the cursor moving it would be fine - problem is that it also moves the focus so that they are suddenly writing text in a different place in the document without noticing too late (old people, they stare at their keyboards).

Most users have laptops, and I've also suspected the trackpad not sensing typing (and thus not deactivating one-touch click on the pad), but I got a report today that a desktop user experienced the same.

What could cause this? Is there any way to tune RDP so that it won't happen? I'm lost..

EDIT:

Some more background info on how we have RDP set up:

• RDP encryption level is set down to "Client Compatible" via GPO in order to support older CE thin clients
• RDP compression is set to "Balances memory and network bandwidth". Same reason as above, to support older RDP clients
• All RDP shortcuts for the users are configured to only use visual styles + persistent bitmap caching. We have tested without visual styles, the mouse still jumps around
• All RDS servers are limited to 16bpp colors, desktop composition and backgrounds are not allowed
• Our MPLS provider has QoS rules in place to keep RDP above Best-Effort (see EDIT2)

EDIT2:

I've inspected the MPLS providers QoS setup, and something feels wrong here (pastebin).. internal RFC1918 traffic is being prioritized in the class below RDP, but with the same drop probability. I'm thinking that this should be in a class further down the list, with a higher drop probability.

I've talked to several employees today, and it seems like this problem is reproduceable if they fire up a ton of domain-joined computers at once (group policies, WSUS updates and so on).

MPLS provider has been approached, and I'm waiting for a free technician to change the QoS settings to see if this helps. I'm going to dump all traffic but RDP on a single site into Best-Effort and see if it helps.

UPDATE 19.07.2013 Still not solved. Discovered that nearly every laptop is missing the touchpad driver, so the touchpad is not being deactivated while the user types. Baaaad. In addition it also happens with desktop PCs, and on any kind of PC with a bandwidth constrained pipe. I've asked a new question on Network Engineering: https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2427/qos-woes-managed-ip-vpn

Solution 1

I think this error is due to touchpad mouse driver, I have Samsung laptop, in RDP if I touch or click on mouse pad it immediately disconnects the session. I disabled mouse driver it is working fine.

Solution 2

This is a very common issue when RDP is working with insufficient bandwidth or high latency. I'm not sure if it is a protocol bug or an implementation bug (eg. if packets are arriving out of order and not being reassembled correctly, or if they are being misinterpreted altogether), but the solution is either to increase available bandwidth, or adjust the RDP settings (disable sound, or reduce the resolution or colour depth).

Solution 3

If you have a user that this happens to often in a day, give them a straight client/server VPN into the RDP server over their internet connection instead of the MPLS, bypassing QoS and the bandwidth congestion of the MPLS circuits themselves.

If all is well for a few days, then you can set aside bugs/issues within the client or server and focus on the MPLS circuits themselves (QoS, bandwidth, latency, etc.).

Solution 4

Have you tried to enable compression? Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Terminal Services\Terminal Server\Remote Session Environment\“Set compression algorithm for RDP data”

NOTE: "Terminal Services" is "Remote Desktop Services" in newer systems

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Comments

[charleswj81]

A lot of people are suggesting this to be a network congestion/bandwidth issue. Can you perform network captures at both source and destination? If the server and/or workstation is 2008R2/Win7 and up, you can use netsh trace start capture=yes, although NetMon or Wireshark suffice as well. This may help you to determine if packets are arriving out of order.

[ewwhite]

When did this start happening?

[kralyk]

Client OS's and RDP version?

[pauska]

@TheCleaner The majority is on XP SP3 with RDP 7.0 and Windows 7 with RDP 7.1/8.0.

[kralyk]

Any updates Pauska?

[pauska]

Sorry, no updates yet. Gone on vacation, so I will continue to investigate this in about a week or so.

[pauska]

Is it really that common? I've searched everywhere for more detailed info about this, and there are extremely few articles about it. All I find is people asking the very same question, with no definite answers.

[Falcon Momot]

I've seen it a lot. Most people give up trying to solve it, or claim that the user is brushing their touchpad if on a laptop.

[pauska]

I did use the approach of blaming them, until they started outnumbering me :(

[pauska]

It was dumb of me to not include that in the OP, question updated with more info.

[pauska]

I really can't imagine this being other than a combination of wrong QoS setup plus missing touchpad drivers. I'll accept this answer.

[Petter H]

this does not answer the question asked...

[pauska]

I think you're on to something - we're experiencing this issue on certain laptop models, and one of them are samsung.

[Jippers]

My Samsung NP900X4C is completely unusable with MSTSC.exe. I have to uninstall my OEM touchpad driver for it to work properly.

[pauska]

I completely forgot to change the accepted answer - the touchpad driver was the culprit. Users were hammering their keyboard, and the touchpad driver didn't disable the touchpad when users type (like it should).