Disconnected Sessions

For best performance and to help eliminate Down sessions and listeners, disable Popup Messages in Winframe/Metaframe. I wish I knew about this two years ago when I figured it out to be a major problem when we were testing WF 1.6. This finally came out of the MS KB. It claims to be a TSE SP5 fix?

Synopsis:

This information in this document is derived from the Microsoft Support site. Click on the following link to see the original document: Article ID: Q229012

Details:

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs. For information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic in Regedit.exe or the "Restoring a Registry Key" Help topic in Regedt32.exe.

Cause

If a disconnected session has an active "Hard Error" dialog box that is generated by a DOS or 16-bit program, it cannot be reset. If a reset is attempted on the workstation, it stays in a "down" state until the computeris restarted.

Resolution

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. For additional information, please see Article Q152734, "How to Obtain the Latest Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack" in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Workaround

To work around this problem, you can disable dialog boxes from being displayed. This is done with a registry setting. For additional information, see Article Q124873, "Disabling System Hard Error Message Dialog Boxes" in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

For information about how to edit the registry, view the "Changing Keys and Values" Help topic in Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) or the "Add and Delete Information in the Registry" and "Edit Registry Data" Help topics in Regedt32.exe. Make sure you back up the registry before you edit it. If you are running Windows NT, ensure you also update your Emergency Repair Disk (ERD).

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Go to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\ErrorMode

3. Change the default value of 0 to 2. The following table defines the three possible values for ErrorMode:

   Value	Result
   0	Errors are serialized and wait for a response.
   1	If the error does not come from the system, the system continues in normal operating mode. If the error comes from the system, the error is written to the system log; no user intervention is required and dialog boxes are not displayed.
   2	The error is written to the system log; the dialog box is not displayed.

Status

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. This problem was first corrected in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5.

You can disable the popup SPOOLSS.exe error you receive on the console at times when the spooler crashes by going to hkey_local_machine\system\currentcontrolset\services\spooler\ErrorControl Key.

These are set to a 1 by default which only suppresses errors from system processes. Change it to a 2 to suppress both system errors and Application errors from popping up.