Windows 2012 and Remote Desktop Services

While installing RDS on Windows 2012 you can run into weird issues, one of which is the installation  stops all of a sudden and asks you to check the mighty “Event Viewer”.

Here is what I have tried and learned over the time, most of the settings that are asked to follow (detailed below) did not come to rescue:

• Run As Administrator
• Enable-PSRemoting -force
  • Test PSSession:
    • New-PSSession -computername ComputerName
    • Get-PSSession
    • In many cases, you will be able to work with remote computers in other domains. However, if the remote computer is not in a trusted domain, the remote computer might not be able to authenticate your credentials. To enable authentication, you need to add the remote computer to the list of trusted hosts for the local computer in WinRM. To do so, type:
    • winrm s winrm/config/client ‘@{TrustedHosts=”RemoteComputer”}’
    • Here, RemoteComputer should be the name of the remote computer, such as:
      • winrm s winrm/config/client ‘@{TrustedHosts=”MyServer”}’
    • Enable “allow remote server management through WinRM” in group policy
    • Install Feature “WinRM IIS Extension”
    • 
• Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Shell\MaxMemoryPerShellMB 1000 [needs a reboot]
  • The default remote shell is allotted 150MB of memory. If we have Sharepoint/IIS App pool on the server then this memory is not sufficient to create a remote session (This is used mostly while installing any roles on windows server 2012) . Therefore by running that command we have enabled the remote shell to use 1000mb which will provide more memory  to windows powershell to make remote sessions and resolve the issue.
• netsh winhttp reset proxy [to clear the proxy]
• disable IPv6

In my Case, the ones that I documented above did not get me going…

Finally, like the information pointed, the issue was with the “Windows Internal Database Service” Not starting.

The service in question was configured to run with the account : NT SERVICE\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##WID

When you dig into the Local Security Settings (Secpol.msc), you will find that the This service account does not have the required user right “Log on as a service.”, Once you add it start the Service, the installation issue is fixed and we are back to business.