On a Windows Server with RDS feature enabled, you might encounter an issue with Windows Update Coordinator being stuck at “Please wait while the application is preparing for the first use” during a program installation. This problem is very easy to resolve with Group Policy Editor (either locally through gpedit.msc or Domain Group Policy).

Navigate to Computer configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Application Compatibility and enable the setting “Turn off Windows Installer RDS Compatibility”.

After installing the program, I would recommend re-enabling Windows Update Coordinator by disabling the GPO setting or leaving it at “Not configured”.

If you have users complaining about incomplete search results on RDS Server 2019, especially in Outlook, this registry key might fix the problem. It did fix mine.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search

DWORD EnablePerUserCatalog 0

Restart the Windows Search service.

This will create the index database under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows rather than in the user’s AppData folder. It should look something like this:

I got tasked with installing a brand new Windows Server 2019 with the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) role. It was a pretty straightforward installation, but minor things might work differently compared to previous versions of Windows Server (I was migrating off Windows Server 2012 R2).

Start by adding the RDS role through Server Manager.

Select the RDS installation:

I went for the Quick Start because my deployment is fairly basic.

Session-based deployment enables multi-session support on the server.

The server should be automatically selected.

The three roles (RD Connection Broker, RD Web Access and RD Session Host) will be installed.

After the installation a license warning will be shown in the Notification Center.

Two things are needed in order for licensing to work properly: The license server and licensing mode.
In a production environment, usually there is a separate server hosting the RDS Licensing service.

Server Manager > Remote Desktop Services > Overview > Tasks > Edit Deployment properties

I had problems with the licensing mode not being applied properly. This registry key worked wonderfully though:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\RCM\Licensing Core
DWORD LicensingMode
4 = Per user
2 = Per Device

The license server can be also set through the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TermService\Parameters\LicenseServers
REG_MULTI_SZ SpecifiedLicenseServers = license.ajni.lab

With RD Licensing Diagnoser you can check for potential errors (can be opened through Server Manager > Tools > Remote Desktop Services).

Now on to the last step: Create a custom device collection.

Server Manager > Remote Desktop Services > Collections > Tasks > Create Session Collection

This is also pretty straight forward stuff.

Make sure you select the server by moving it to the right with the arrow.

In a production environment a custom group should be used to control the number of permitted users.

User profile disks were not needed in my environment.

After the creation, there are some things that should be changed in the Collection properties (Server Manager > Remote Desktop Services > Collections > Collection Name):

These are my specific settings, you should change the parameters based on your experience or leave them at their default values.

Older clients might have problems with these security settings (like Network Level Authentication – NLA)

Do not forget to apply the changes.

Bonus:

If you have specific AD user attributes, like the home folder or program auto-start, they will not work because of changes made to RDS 2016/2019. You can read this article from Microsoft’s website: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3200967/changes-to-remote-connection-manager-in-windows-server

Following registry entries will tell the Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) to query AD DS for RDP profile settings:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services
Name: fQueryUserConfigFromDC
Type: Reg_DWORD
Value: 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-tcp
Name: fQueryUserConfigFromDC
Type: Reg_DWORD

A quick post on how to change the Windows display language with Powershell. You might use these commands based on any logic that determines the user’s location/language. For instance, I created a script that gets executed on logon and sets the language based on some criteria (maybe an Active-Directory group or attribute).

Set-Culture en-US
Set-WinSystemLocale -SystemLocale en-US
Set-WinUILanguageOverride -Language en-US
Set-WinUserLanguageList en-US -Force
Set-WinHomeLocation -GeoId 244

You can find the right GeoID on Microsoft’s website