When users login to a Windows Server 2003 R2 running Terminal Services they have a blank desktop. Upon inspection, explorer.exe is not running. When I login as administrator, using either RDP or to the console, I am having the same issue. I can pull up the taskman and start explorer.exe manually. I have another Terminal Server setup exactly the same way (same apps, settings, GPO, etc . . .) the only difference is we deployed Symantec Endpoint Client 11.0.5 on Friday. For some reason the working Terminal Server is still on 11.0.4, but the suspect server received the 11.0.5 client upgrade.
I checked the eventviewer for any relevant explorer.exe entries to no avail. It seems that if SEP is preventing explorer.exe from starting at login it would do the same for the domain admin starting explorer.exe from the taskman. I disabled the SEP client and services on the server and issued smc -stop and tried logging in again. Still no explorer.exe. So I'm not sure if the client upgrade is relevant but it is worth mentioning since that was the last system change.
The 2 servers are members of a NLB group. I took the bad terminal server out of the group until the issue is resolved. Actually stopped the host using NLB manager
Any help is appreciated.
Best Answer
Found a bad login script via the registry and deleted it. Problem fixed.