Terminal Services issue

[Number6]

One school I manage uses SBS2003 with around 40 clients. We've experienced a few strange problems recently culminating today with the discovery that some client PCs cannot be connected to via TS from the server, not all of them, just most. It's a problem because a number of users login over RWW and they can't now.

Coincidentally today a number of Outlook 2003 clients have decided to take themselves offline, again not all of them. In every case simply unticking the 'work offline' menu item solves the issue. This issue may or may not be related to the TS issue.

Finally, and in reverse chronological order, last week a few PCs developed slow login issues, in all cases this was resolved by removing the affected machines from the network and rejoining them.

Do the above issues seem as though they could be inter-related is the first question? DNS issue maybe?

What could cause some PCs to become non-contactable over TS? No machine has any other connectivity related problem - all can see network shares, all can access the internet and Exchange, all can logon OK.

I've taken one of the affected machines off the network and rejoined it but to no avail this time.

I need to attack this issue first thing in the morning so I'd really appreciate any pointers where to look first, any ideas of what the issue(s) could be.

Pete

[Lee_K_81]

Are you trying to connect via the machine name or IP address?
If machine name - try IP address, if that works, then it looks like a DNS issue.

[matt40k]

Doesn't SBS have a limit to amount of users\devices it have can have attached?

[Number6]

Doesn't SBS have a limit to amount of users\devices it have can have attached?

Yes, 75 user accounts. We're well within this limit though.

[Number6]

Are you trying to connect via the machine name or IP address?
If machine name - try IP address, if that works, then it looks like a DNS issue.

I can ping the workstations by name and by IP, they show up on net view but I can't RDC to them either by name or IP.

[f21970]

It seems like a daft question - but have the users passwords expired? I had a similar issue on TS running on Server 2008 and found that it was because the users passwords had expired, and TS was unable to handle a password change request - it just wouldn't let them connect.

[Number6]

I can connect to the SIMS server and the NAS box by TS and RDC and I can also map a drive from the SBS box to a folder on the "invisible" workstation. All that I can't do is to connect to the workstation by TS, RDC or RWW.

[Number6]

It seems like a daft question - but have the users passwords expired? I had a similar issue on TS running on Server 2008 and found that it was because the users passwords had expired, and TS was unable to handle a password change request - it just wouldn't let them connect.

Unfortunately no. I reset the users password earlier today, just in case.

[f21970]

Are the clients static or DHCP or a mixture?

[Number6]

Are the clients static or DHCP or a mixture?

All clients are DHCP, servers and printers are assigned statics.

[Number6]

A strange and silly situation it was!

The affected machines had all had remote access permissions removed. Why and how I don't know.

GP seems OK and if I manually re-allow RA then all is fine