Remote Desktop Service is currently Busy

Technology fails us when we least desire it. This week I needed to remote into a Win7 system and got a most unusual message:

This message is not very helpful. Evidently I can’t log in. Other people can, and puportedly I can in the future some time, but not now. No, you are not invited. Come back later.

I tried again in a few minutes a number of times to no effect. Googling found only small cohorts of discontented users on MS message boards with no known recourse. So here was mine:

  • Waiting will not solve this.
  • Trying again will only get you the same warning or a black screen and connection timeout.
  • On logging into the affected box locally, all screens go black and the machine freezes.
  • Restarting the machine extirpates the issue.

So it is a bit of Windows flatus. Restart and pretend it never happened, as MS support will tell you. Perhaps a patch will be pending in the future.