“The connection has been lost. Attempting to reconnect to your session…” had almost made me scrap Vista on my home PC. Ever since my hard drive died and I committed to Vista, I’ve received this error message when attempting to access my Windows 2003 SBS Server. I’ve had no problems accessing Windows XP based machines, but I experienced the exact same issue using Terminals from this machine.
I was sick of having to break out my XP laptop to administer my work network from home, so I decided today was the day to fix this problem. I searched and Googled and read the entire Vista Remote Desktop Connection Authentication FAQ, but did not find the answer.
I hoped setting the AuthenticationLevelOverride registry key would do it, but that didn’t make a difference.
Finally, when I thought all hope was lost (and dinner was on the table), I came across this post, which said to run the following from an elevated command prompt:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
This disabled Vista’s TCP/IP autotuning feature. I didn’t even have to reboot, Remote Desktop has worked great ever since I made this change. No more problems, not even once.
If for some reason you want to re-enable TCP/IP auto tuning, the command is:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
Check out my other post concerning problems with Vista’s auto tuning and Microsoft Outlook 2007′s cached mode.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
I m getting the same error on a windows server 2003 machine. And when i run the command “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled” it says command not found.
Can you guide me on what to do next ?
YOU DA’ MAN!!!
Works great.
Sweet! I have been looking forever to solve this problem. Except I only had it some of the time when connnecting to machines on the wan. The other half of the time I could connect fine. Don’t ask me why.
You just saved me a fresh install of xp as i was getting fed up with vista and rdp. This solved the problem completely!
I tried this several times without success — any other ideas? I’m using Vista Home and connecting remotely to a Windows 2003 server — remote desktop connection and remote desktop web connection both keep losing their connections!!!
Thank you!
BTW, Vista sucks…
i changed from rdp 6 to 5.1 and that made no difference, change router settings, anything, but your solution works excellent. I cant believe MS have again stuffed something else.
thanks again
I have the same problem with XP SP2. I get “The connection has been lost.” message and the command “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled” comes up “not found”. Does anyone know of a XP solution?
Thanks, It works well for me. I have a Windows Vista Ultimate.
OMG this has been an hugely annoying problem, thank you!
I didn’t know if it was my router, ISP, etc. So many places to look.
How come this didn’t get fixed in Vista SP1 I wish I knew…
OMG! U R Great!
I have been dealing with this andloosing sleep connecting from vista to Server 2008 and having this issue for months.
But I assumed it was a Server issue, not a Client issue.
When authenticating to the server for the RDP session, it would keep saying that it was attempting to reconnect AFTER giving it my credentials.(would connect fine up to that point)
Issue SOLVED with that cmd line switch! THANK YOU!!!
thank you so very much!!!
what used to take me several hours to complete because of all the disconnecting and reconnecting now only takes me one! 
thank you!
Thanks !!! i;ve been looking for a solution for months !!!
Thanks alot, it wont return to normal (Gives me The following command was not found: interface tcp global autotuninglevel=normal.) And I`ve tried all sorts of variations, like autotuninglevel = normal autotuninglevel= normal autotuninglevel=normal, etc etc, but it just wont recognize the command :S:S:S:S:S:S
Is there a solution for connection from xp pro sp3? Thank you.
I was having the same problem connecting remotely from my home machine XP/SP3, to my work machine Windows 7. The connection dropped constantly.
The solution was to upgrade my home machine to the Remote Desktop Connection Client 7.0. Everything has worked great since.
Here’s the download:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969084
~Sophie
Looking for a solution for connection from XP pro sp2 to Windows 2003 server. That autotuninglevel parameter just doesn’t apply, but I’m getting severe connection issues!
I lost my internet connection; have given up on trying. I am switching to Google Chrome, would that pose any kind of problem?
When described didn’t help, I created .bat file to cyclic copy a small file to remote machine, so VPN connection always used and doesn’t reconnect. Similar can be done via windows scheduler.
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