Windows 8 RDP connection randomly dropping

Question

Remote desktop connections from one Windows 8 (Pro, 64-bit) machine to another Windows 8 (Pro, 64-bit) machine are being dropped at seemingly random intervals. I can successfully reconnect immediately afterwards.

The only relevant item I can find in the Windows event log is a message from the Desktop Window Manager that says 'The Desktop Window Manager has exited with code (0xd00002fe)'. There are a few hits for this on the internet - this thread suggests it might be due to conflicting print drivers, but I have no printers (or any other devices) installed.

This issue wasn't present when both machines were running Windows 7.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to what might be causing this issue?

Solution

I found out it was a problem with auto login enabled; when you enable auto login with control userpasswords 2; rdp behaves kind a weird and drops the connection. After disabling auto login i was able to normally connect to my rdp server.

Comments

[Ramhound]

You don't have ANY devices installed at all? I hate to suggest something you already decided wasn't the cause, but try two 100% clean installations, see if that helps. You should also restart the service on both computers.

[Quppa]

There are no external peripherals (it's a headless system), just a power cable and an ethernet cable connected. Windows 8 was cleanly installed on both systems, and the issue has been present from the start.

[Niall]

possible duplicate of Remote desktop session closes immediately after logging in