Networks

Ask something
Question Locked

Server 2003 ID # issues

0 helpful
11 replies

by jneff02

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I have a server running Server 2003 Enterprise x64. Our employees are accessing the server via Terminal Services (RDP). Recently, after a few days of the server being on I've noticed that the users ID #'s, when you open Task Manager and click on the users tab, are not recycling back to low numbers. They should be refreshing back to #1 when the person who owned that ID # has been logged off for a period of time. I have actually seen those numbers go up to the 1,000's!!! I have to reboot to get those numbers to recycle. What I'm trying to get at here is, does anyone know why this might be happening? I can't find anything relevant myself. Thanks.

11 replies

by grey hat geek

Are you using Terminal Services Manager to view the RDP sessions?

by jneff02

I'm just talking about viewing them from the server task manager. That's where I noticed the ID #'s running up.

by lowlands

will show the same as TSAdmin. Unless of course you're looking at the PID in taskmanager.

by lowlands

The session ID's only get recycled after a reboot, so session id 1 will not be re-used when that user logs of. This has been the case with both RDP (terminal services) and ICA (Citrix) sessions for as long as I have been using it.

by jneff02

Really? I haven't really paid attention to this much in the past but I don't ever remember seeing the session ID #'s up in the 1,000's. We have another Server 2003 that has a few TS CALS on it and I've tested that one and they recycle the ID #'s back to the lowest one that is available. Let's say that the person using session ID 2 logged off, the next person to log on should get ID #2, not 1,002. I'm still thinking there is an issue. We had a nasty virus attack about a month ago and I'm not sure if we wiped something out unintentionally.

by lowlands

I might have misread your original post. Looks like you are talking about the session ID, and I was referring to SESSION, it also gets a number, looks something like RDP-tcp#99, that one keeps adding up, the ID is being reused, you're right.

by jneff02

I see what you are talking about. Yes, the tcp session does keep adding up. Any ideas on our issue though?

by grey hat geek

I was reading that when a user logs off from a Terminal Services client, the session that the client has on the terminal server is deleted and the window stations and desktops associated with that session are removed. However, because the Terminal Services console session is never deleted, the window stations associated with the console session are not deleted. Could this be the reason that the number keeps growing and is not allocated to the next user? Just a thought, could be wrong, but you got me to thinking so I did some digging. :)

by jneff02

I understand what you're saying, but I just find it odd that my other Windows 2003 machine does recycle those Session ID #'s.

by bill

I have just recently started having the same issue. I know for a fact that these numbers did recycle until recently because i had a user that always needed session one due to a redirected printing issue. (Until if fixed this with a script to rename their printer) The redirected printer gets the "in session ##" appended to the name.

I am suspecting this was a change that happened in a recent MS update. Anyone have any idea how to get this back to recycling the session id's? I have a server with 12+ licenses that can go a couple of weeks between reboots which makes for some very large session numbers....

This discussion is closed to new replies.