Windows 11 22H2 - stuck RDP session establishment when using UDP transport

Just a quick post. If you've recently upgraded to Windows 11 22H2 you might have noticed that RDP using UDP transport (mostly used in optimized scenarios like RDS Farms) cannot connect anymore and is stuck at Loading the virtual machine.

stuck on connection establishment

According to Microsoft the problem occurs only when establishing a connection using the Remote Desktop gateway or Remote Desktop Connection Broker.

Fix 1 - Group policy

As a workaround, Microsoft suggests disabling UDP using the Group Policy editor. For this you need:

Open the Group Policy Management Console or the Local Group Policy Editor.
Go to "Computer Configuration" -> "Administrative Templates" -> "Windows Components" -> "Remote Desktop Services" -> "Remote Desktop Connection Client" .
Find the policy "Turn off UDP On Client" and set its value to "Enabled" .
Apply the changes

Fix 2 - Registry setting

If you want to fix only on specifically affected devices (using item level targeting in GPO for example), you can use the following registry setting to apply the fix.

Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services\Client
Property: fClientDisableUDP
Type: DWORD (32-bit)
Value: 1

Performance impactAs RDP is using UDP to improve performance quite nicely, you should only apply the workaround until there's a fix from Microsoft.