Windows 2012 flickering screen

[jandemuynck]

Since we switched to Windows 2012 as base for our terminal server solutions we get complaints from our clients that they frequently experience a flickering screen when using the Terminal server.
This is not the case on the systems where we use the Microsoft Terminal server but only occurs on the TSplus configurations.

We tied several solutions. eg. we disabled RemoteFX on the windows 2012 servers.
This helps a bit but doesn't solve the problem completely.
The clients still complain.

We have several installations and all of them experience the same problem.

This problem is now out for several months.
Does anyone has a real solution ???

Is TSplus working on this item as it pretends to be compatible with Windows 2012 ???

[admin]

Hello,

The reason you have these blinking issues is probably because we stopped disabling aero theme with the latest release. I recommend you to to disable aero manually which will probably solve your issue. A blinking can also occur if you have an open task manager on server side, closing it stops the blinking.

Regards,
TSplus support team

[leomylonas]

I'm also having the same problem with Windows 2012 R2.
You can't "disable" Aero in the GPO, but you can force it to load "Windows Basic"

I will try this out and let you know how I go.

[leomylonas]

OK, I've tried this out to no avail. Do you have any other suggestions?
My users are very angry with me right now.

[ctm99]

Also have this problem with Windows 2012, on more than one site.

At one site we had to downgrade to 2008r2 (which you can do with the 2012 license) as the issue was so bad. Since then the problem never re-occurred, but we almost lost the client over it, not to mention a stack of time we couldn't bill for.

On another site the client decided to stay with w2012, but the flickering is still a major problem, especially with large pdf's.

Definitely having Task Manager or the TSplus Admin Tool running makes it worse.

This has become a real problem for us, the fault seems to lay with Microcash, not being able to reduce the number of colours is causing network issues, particularly across slow connections (the server ignores the colour depth setting of the client, you get 32bit regardless). If the TS guys can put a bit of effort into finding a solution to the screen issues we would really appreciate it.

We have a dozen or so TSplus installs out there, only the W2012 ones are causing problems. With W2008 no longer available we are left without a 'product' to offer. At the moment we can't recommend the 'TSplus + W2012' combination to anybody. It doesn't work as well as expected.

Craig

[jkuijt]

Hi all

Which connection client are you using?:
- html5?
- java?
- windows? TSplus or Microsoft client?

And what kind of flicker issues do you see? Is the whole remote desktop flickering?
I think it is important for the TSplus guys that they find the cause of this problem and hopefully a solution.

Best regards
Jeffrey

[ctm99]

On our sites we use a variety of thick & thin clients, running both standard MS RDP client as well as TSplus clients. We even has some older Linux based thin clients running rdesktop. All flicker to some extent. The heavy users tend to have the TSplus client as they like to run dual monitors & the TSplus client allows you to do that easily.

I also have a smaller site running W2012r2 with HTML, Java & Seamless clients enabled. All flicker when pushed, but as this is a low traffic server it hasn't presented as a problem.

In trying to resolve this issue (over several months) we set up W2012 test systems both virtual and physical, turn off & on almost everything we could think of in the GPO, used every type of client on offer, nothing worked. Hence the downgrade back to W2008r2 for the 60 user site, works perfectly.

About the only thing we didn't try was a straight W2012 TS machine, but that requires Active Directory now, which we don't have on most client sites, so even if it worked, wasn't an option. I haven't heard any rumbling on the net from straight TS users about flickering, so maybe it doesn't happen there.

The flickering manifests itself as rapid swapping of two or more windows on the desktop. The windows can be anything, but Adobe reader is where we see it most. Whilst this rapid switching is going on the user is unable to do anything but wait. The wait could be anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute. Only that user is affected, the rest of the users are unaffected.
You can also see it by bringing up the Task Manager or the TSplus Admin console. In these cases the windows become unresponsive. You may or may not have control of the window. The window (if it's the only one up for example), will visually flick, mouse clicks can be ignored requiring several clicks to save something or change from 'Server' to 'Applications'. It happens a lot less in v6.80 then it did in earlier versions.

Without a doubt MS broke something in Remote Desktop trying to push us all to Aero / VDI and RemoteFX, technologies our smaller clients have no interest in.

Craig

[jkuijt]

Hi Craig,

We and our customer use TSplus on a Windows 7 Ultimate 'server' pc without any flicker issues.

Do you know if the flicker issues also happen on Windows 8.1 because Windows 8.1 and Windows 2012 R2 contain the same OS kernel.

Perhaps you can make a movie with Camtasia to record your flicker issues? So that the guys of TSplus can 'see' what is happening. In the past I had some other problems with TSplus and I recorded my problem with Camtasia to show them my problem. After they saw my movie, it was clear to them and they came with a solution!

The support of the TSplus guys is very very good!!

Best regards
Jeffrey

[admin]

Hello,

We have been able to locate the reason of these flickering issues and hope to be able to fix it soon. Meanwhile I recommend you to update your display drivers on your TSplus server. It seems that this issue occur when using a standard Microsoft version of display drivers instead of using the manufacturer's version of display drivers.

Hope this helps

[admin]

Hello,

There it is :

On W8 and Windows 2012, Microsoft is installing a default standard graphic driver that is not enough compatible with some applications and the new Metro interface. As result some application are flickering.
In order to avoid this annoyance, we have develop a patch that you can download using the following link:
dl-files.com/BlinkingPatch.exe
Just run it as administrator and reboot.
After the reboot, the users shall not have any more blinking/flickering annoyances.