Has anyone else experienced this problem?
While browsing folders in explorer over a remote desktop connection, sometimes the file name strings will get corrupted, so they display incorrectly in windows explorer.
Remote desktop (or terminal services) must have some kind of graphical cache for strings, which is being corrupted for particular strings almost at random, especially file names in windows explorer.
I can't reproduce the error on-demand, but once it occurs, you can copy the file name string and paste it other places in explorer, such as the address bar, the "run" dialog, etc… and that exact string will be corrupted there as well. If you type out the string by hand, it also becomes corrupted as soon as you add the final character, even if you type the first part of the string, the last part, and finish by adding the final character… the end result is that once the corrupted string is reestablished, the visual display is wrong (it goes blank, or has the wrong characters).
It's purely a visual defect. I can still edit the string. If I remove a character, the entire string displays fine (because it's a different string). If I add a different character, it also displays fine, but as soon as I add the original character, restoring the original (corrupted) string, the display of the string is either blank or garbled.
Who can this be reported to.. it's clearly a nasty bug.
EDIT: A corrupted string seems to manifest itself visually by being replaced with strings from file property dialogs, such as ID strings, words like "Permission" or "Allow", and file paths; perhaps the bug has something to do with displaying file property windows.
EDIT: Added Image Below. If I resize the separator, the strings will change (they end in "…", so it's a different, uncorrupted string, which displays fine. Actually, you can't even capture this as a full-screen image from within remote desktop, because it comes back without the display glitches! Only by restoring the remote desktop window to a window-ized state, and taking a picture of the client desktop with the remote desktop window open is it possible to see this corruption… so perhaps its a client string-rendering issue.
Best Answer
I've absolutely seen what you're describing in RDP sessions to Windows Server 2003 machines. I've been unable to repro the bug and I've probably only seen it 20 - 30 times (out of thousands of RDP sessions), but I've definitely seen it.
I've seen this both in a window and full-screen. I've almost always used the "Low-speed broadband" "Experience" settings, so only bitmap caching and visual styles are enabled.