Windows 11 22H2 freezing Remote Desktop gets a fix in KB5022360 preview cumulative update

The issue causing Windows 11 22H2 users to experience a freezing Remote Desktop app is now solved in the recently released KB5022360 preview cumulative update.

This issue causing Remote Desktop clients to freeze, not connect, and disconnect started in September last year, leading to a stream of reports from admins and users.

“After installing Windows 11, version 22H2 (also called Windows 11 2022 Update), the Windows Remote Desktop application might stop responding when connecting via a Remote Desktop gateway or Remote Desktop Connection Broker,” Microsoft says on its Windows health dashboard. “This issue can be observed when the client is at the ‘Loading virtual machine’ or ‘Configuring remote connection’ steps, and might occur regardless of the OS version installed on the remote computer. In some cases, the error message ‘Your Remote Desktop Services session has ended’ can appear.”

Before the fix, Microsoft recommended terminating the unresponsive app through the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc > Processes > mstsc.exe > End task). Nonetheless, KB5022360 should now resolve this issue if users will manually download and install it.

It is worth noting that the preview cumulative update, part of Microsoft’s January 2022 monthly C update, only tests the fixes that are being prepared for the February 2023 Patch Tuesday. It has no security fixes, although it delivers different solutions and improvements for addressing other system issues. With this, KB5022360 is not essentially needed by everyone.

Affected users experiencing freezing Remote Desktop app, on the other hand, can now get it to get the problem solved. If not, they can resort to the workaround being suggested by Microsoft and wait for the February Patch Tuesday cumulative updates. Meanwhile, admins can implement the temporary solution by configuring a special Group Policy (Group Policy editor > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Connection Client). It involves enabling the policy setting “Turn Off UDP On Client” and restarting the device. Nonetheless, Microsoft says there is a caveat in this workaround.

“Remote Desktop sessions which connect over WAN (wide-area network) might experience poor performance following the application of the below workaround,” explains Microsoft. “Setting this policy also disables UDP (User Datagram Protocol) for all Remote Desktop connections made from the device. We strongly recommend that this Group Policy change is reverted once this issue is resolved in a future Windows update.”