Current behavior:
- TermService is running
- RDP is enabled in System Properties
- No firewall blocks (Remote Desktop rules enabled)
- But:
netstat -ano | findstr 3389returns nothing — port 3389 is not listening
What I’ve already tried:
- Rebinding RDP certificate via:
- WMIC
- PowerShell (WMI + registry byte conversion)
- Completely removing SSL cert binding
- Restarting TermService multiple times
- Rebooting multiple times
- Deleting:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp - Even deleting entire WinStations key and rebooting
- Resetting TLS/Schannel settings
- Disabling NLA
- Verifying port is still 3389 (registry shows correct)
- DISM + SFC (no corruption found)
- Confirmed:
- Other ports are listening
- Networking is fine
- No port conflict
Important notes:
- This is NOT an RDS Session Host (only RDS Licensing role installed)
- Listener shows in WMI (
Win32_TSGeneralSetting) but does not bind to network - Cert binding has been cleared and reapplied — no change
What it looks like:
It seems like the RDP listener exists logically but fails to bind to TCP stack entirely.
Question:
Has anyone seen a case where:
- TermService runs
- RDP is enabled
- BUT no 3389 listener exists?
Is this basically a corrupted RDP/WinStations stack at this point, or is there something deeper I’m missing?
I’m considering an in-place repair install, but wanted to sanity check before going that route.
Any ideas would be hugely appreciated — I feel like I’ve exhausted the usual fixes.