Chrome Remote Desktop Host Is Offline

Posted on 20-04-2021 by admin

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TeamViewer and Chrome Remote Desktop are one of the most convenient options to remotely access a device. The reason being, both of them are cross-platform compatible and easy to set-up. However, while there are lots of similarities amongst the apps, there are huge differences as well.

The most basic underlying difference is that Chrome Remote Desktop is built to remotely access a computer. Hence, you cannot use it to control a smartphone. Whereas, TeamViewer is more flexible and lets you remotely access any device. So, if you are still confused between both the apps, here is a brief rundown of TeamViewer vs. Chrome Remote Desktop and which one should you use.

Chrome Remote Desktop vs. TeamViewer

1. Cross-platform Compatibility

You'll find this change the next time you restart the Chrome Remote Desktop host. The virtual desktop session is created and.chrome-remote-desktop-session starts when Chrome Remote Desktop starts. Tip: Your desktop environment may not support more than one session at a time. In this case, we recommend that you use different desktop. Open Chrome Remote Desktop on the host system. Find the remote system you’re trying to connect to. Click the trash icon (Disable remote connection) button next to it. Once deleted, set up Remote Desktop on the remote system again.

When it comes to cross-platform compatibility, both apps have a huge presence. To begin with, Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) is a web app. Hence, it doesn’t require any additional installation and is more convenient to use. However, if you want to host remote access, you will have to download the CRD host app. But since Google is shutting down Chrome apps, CRD will only be a web app in the future. On niche platforms like Raspberry Pi or Linux, you can use Chrome Remote Desktop via the Chromium browser.

On the other hand, TeamViewer also has a web and a standalone app. For hosting remote access, you will have to install the TeamViewer standalone app. The app is available for a huge number of platforms like Linux, ChromeOS, macOS, Raspberry Pi, etc.

Score: CRD 1 – 1 TeamViewer

Step 3: Request for Offline Access. A popout window will then open up requesting further authorisation for 'offline access' - Click 'Accept'. The screen will go white and a box will appear saying 'Chrome is downloading the Chrome Remote Desktop Host installer.' - Leave this window for now, and a download will start which will be an image. Chrome Remote Desktop allows users to remotely access another computer through Chrome browser or a Chromebook. Computers can be made available on an short-term basis for scenarios such as ad hoc remote support, or on a more long-term basis for remote access to your applications and files.

2. Set up Process

Chrome Remote Desktop takes the cake here as it is extremely convenient to set up. In case, you want to remotely access a device, just use the Chrome Remote Desktop web app. For Android and iOS, you will have to download the mobile app. To establish a remote session via a smartphone, you just have to log in with the same Google ID on both the devices. Post that, enter your PIN for connection authentication and you are good to go. For one-off random system access, you can opt for a random access PIN instead.

Random access on Chrome Remote Desktop works only between 2 Laptops or Desktops.

TeamViewer also follows a similar process but I found the TeamViewer app requires a few attempts before it can establish a connection.

Score: CRD 2 – 1 TeamViewer

3. Features

Chrome Remote Desktop is a minimal app and it doesn’t provide any additional features worth mentioning. Both the apps provide you the option to sign up and register your devices under one account.

On the other hand, TeamViewer provides a whole bunch of features that would suffice the need of any user. Foremost, you get a chat interface that often comes in handy as you have to communicate with the client. Additionally, TeamViewer also provides the flexibility of annotation, file transfer, etc. If you register and sign-in, you can also monitor your remote devices and take remote backup.

Score: CRD 2 – 2 TeamViewer

4. Limitations

The major drawback with Chrome Remote Desktop is you cannot access your smartphone via the desktop. Additionally, if you want to remote control a random laptop, you cannot use a smartphone. Random access requires another laptop. In comparison, I didn’t find any such limitations on TeamViewer. The only thing is it requires you to install separate apps on mobile for remote control and host.

Score: CRD 2 – 3 TeamViewer

5. Security

Security is also a major concern in remote access due to the recent scams. In terms of that, both the apps use AES/RSA to encrypt the connection. Hence, there are rare chances of data being sniffed in the network. Similarly, both the apps require user-id and password authentication when initiating a random connection.

However, what I liked about TeamViewer is that while you are in the screen-sharing session, the desktop wallpaper turns black. Additionally, there is a dialog box at the bottom right-hand side indicating a screen sharing session. This makes you aware all the time that you are in a screen sharing session whereas I couldn’t find anything similar on CRD.

Having said that, once you have initiated a screen-sharing session, the person has unrestricted access to your files in both the apps. Hence, it personally comes down on you to be careful while dealing with a random user.

Score: CRD 3 – 4 TeamViewer

6. Pricing

Chrome Remote Desktop is free by nature and there is no paid variant of it. Moreover, I wasn’t able to find a limit to the number of computers you can add to a single account.

The free TeamViewer account comes with an unsaid limit on the number of devices under an account. In case you exceed the limit, your account will be flagged.

For personal use, TeamViewer is free. The only caveat is that you will get a pop-up after every session stating it is a free variant for non-commercial use. Hence, if you are planning to use it for commercial purposes, you should opt for the paid variant instead. TeamViewer offers multiple pricing starting at about $19/month. The paid services provide additional capabilities like establishing multiple concurrent sessions, in-depth remote device information, event logging, etc.

Score: CRD 4 – 5 TeamViewer

Conclusion: Which one should you choose?

Although the winner is TeamViewer, the conclusion is not binary. In case you want to manage your own or family devices, Chrome Remote Desktop is an ideal option. Apart from remote file transfer, it provides the necessary controls that can get work done in most of the scenarios. However, if you want to start providing remote support to multiple individuals that have different operating systems, TeamViewer provides flexibility and a vast range of tools.

For more issues or queries, let me know in the comments below.

Also Read: Looking for Alternative to TeamViewer? Here are 5 Best of Them

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This topic discusses how to select Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) hardware, tune the host, and tune applications.

In this topic:

Selecting the proper hardware for performance

For an RD Session Host server deployment, the choice of hardware is governed by the application set and how users use them. The key factors that affect the number of users and their experience are CPU, memory, disk, and graphics. This section contains additional guidelines that are specific to RD Session Host servers and is mostly related to the multi-user environment of RD Session Host servers.

CPU configuration

CPU configuration is conceptually determined by multiplying the required CPU to support a session by the number of sessions that the system is expected to support, while maintaining a buffer zone to handle temporary spikes. Multiple logical processors can help reduce abnormal CPU congestion situations, which are usually caused by a few overactive threads that are contained by a similar number of logical processors.

Therefore, the more logical processors on a system, the lower the cushion margin that must be built in to the CPU usage estimate, which results in a larger percentage of active load per CPU. One important factor to remember is that doubling the number of CPUs does not double CPU capacity.

Memory configuration

Memory configuration is dependent on the applications that users employ; however, the required amount of memory can be estimated by using the following formula: TotalMem = OSMem + SessionMem * NS

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OSMem is how much memory the operating system requires to run (such as system binary images, data structures, and so on), SessionMem is how much memory processes running in one session require, and NS is the target number of active sessions. The amount of required memory for a session is mostly determined by the private memory reference set for applications and system processes that are running inside the session. Shared code or data pages have little effect because only one copy is present on the system.

One interesting observation (assuming the disk system that is backing up the page file does not change) is that the larger the number of concurrent active sessions the system plans to support, the bigger the per-session memory allocation must be. If the amount of memory that is allocated per session is not increased, the number of page faults that active sessions generate increases with the number of sessions. These faults eventually overwhelm the I/O subsystem. By increasing the amount of memory that is allocated per session, the probability of incurring page faults decreases, which helps reduce the overall rate of page faults.

Disk configuration

Storage is one of the most overlooked aspects when you configure RD Session Host servers, and it can be the most common limitation in systems that are deployed in the field.

The disk activity that is generated on a typical RD Session Host server affects the following areas:

System files and application binaries
Page files
User profiles and user data

Ideally, these areas should be backed up by distinct storage devices. Using striped RAID configurations or other types of high-performance storage further improves performance. We highly recommend that you use storage adapters with battery-backed write caching. Controllers with disk write caching offer improved support for synchronous write operations. Because all users have a separate hive, synchronous write operations are significantly more common on an RD Session Host server. Registry hives are periodically saved to disk by using synchronous write operations. To enable these optimizations, from the Disk Management console, open the Properties dialog box for the destination disk and, on the Policies tab, select the Enable write caching on the disk and Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device check boxes.

Network configuration

Network usage for an RD Session Host server includes two main categories:

RD Session Host connection traffic usage is determined almost exclusively by the drawing patterns that are exhibited by the applications running inside the sessions and the redirected devices I/O traffic.
For example, applications handling text processing and data input consume bandwidth of approximately 10 to 100 kilobits per second, whereas rich graphics and video playback cause significant increases in bandwidth usage.
Back-end connections such as roaming profiles, application access to file shares, database servers, e-mail servers, and HTTP servers.
The volume and profile of network traffic is specific to each deployment.

Tuning applications for Remote Desktop Session Host

Most of the CPU usage on an RD Session Host server is driven by apps. Desktop apps are usually optimized toward responsiveness with the goal of minimizing how long it takes an application to respond to a user request. However in a server environment, it is equally important to minimize the total amount of CPU usage that is needed to complete an action to avoid adversely affecting other sessions.

Consider the following suggestions when you configure apps that are to be used on an RD Session Host server:

Minimize background idle loop processing
Typical examples are disabling background grammar and spell check, data indexing for search, and background saves.
Minimize how often an app performs a state check or update.
Disabling such behaviors or increasing the interval between polling iterations and timer firing significantly benefits CPU usage because the effect of such activities is quickly amplified for many active sessions. Typical examples are connection status icons and status bar information updates.
Minimize resource contention between apps by reducing their synchronization frequency.
Examples of such resources include registry keys and configuration files. Examples of application components and features are status indicator (like shell notifications), background indexing or change monitoring, and offline synchronization.
Disable unnecessary processes that are registered to start with user sign-in or a session startup.
These processes can significantly contribute to the cost of CPU usage when creating a new user session, which generally is a CPU-intensive process, and it can be very expensive in morning scenarios. Use MsConfig.exe or MsInfo32.exe to obtain a list of processes that are started at user sign-in. For more detailed info, you can use Autoruns for Windows.

For memory consumption, you should consider the following:

Verify that DLLs loaded by an app are not relocated.
- Relocated DLLs can be verified by selecting Process DLL view, as shown in the following figure, by using Process Explorer.
- Here we can see that y.dll was relocated because x.dll already occupied its default base address and ASLR was not enabled
  If DLLs are relocated, it is impossible to share their code across sessions, which significantly increases the footprint of a session. This is one of the most common memory-related performance issues on an RD Session Host server.
For common language runtime (CLR) applications, use Native Image Generator (Ngen.exe) to increase page sharing and reduce CPU overhead.
When possible, apply similar techniques to other similar execution engines.

Remote Desktop Session Host tuning parameters

Page file

Insufficient page file size can cause memory allocation failures in apps or system components. You can use the memory-to-committed bytes performance counter to monitor how much committed virtual memory is on the system.

Antivirus

Installing antivirus software on an RD Session Host server greatly affects overall system performance, especially CPU usage. We highly recommend that you exclude from the active monitoring list all the folders that hold temporary files, especially those that services and other system components generate.

Task Scheduler

Task Scheduler lets you examine the list of tasks that are scheduled for different events. For an RD Session Host server, it is useful to focus specifically on the tasks that are configured to run on idle, at user sign-in, or on session connect and disconnect. Because of the specifics of the deployment, many of these tasks might be unnecessary.

Desktop notification icons

Notification icons on the desktop can have fairly expensive refreshing mechanisms. You should disable any notifications by removing the component that registers them from the startup list or by changing the configuration on apps and system components to disable them. You can use Customize Notifications Icons to examine the list of notifications that are available on the server.

Remote Desktop Protocol data compression

Remote Desktop Protocol compression can be configured by using Group Policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment > Configure compression for RemoteFX data. Three values are possible:

Optimized to use less memory Consumes the least amount of memory per session but has the lowest compression ratio and therefore the highest bandwidth consumption.
Balances memory and network bandwidth Reduced bandwidth consumption while marginally increasing memory consumption (approximately 200 KB per session).
Optimized to use less network bandwidth Further reduces network bandwidth usage at a cost of approximately 2 MB per session. If you want to use this setting, you should assess the maximum number of sessions and test to that level with this setting before you place the server in production.

You can also choose to not use a Remote Desktop Protocol compression algorithm, so we only recommend using it with a hardware device designed to optimize network traffic. Even if you choose not to use a compression algorithm, some graphics data will be compressed.

Device redirection

Device redirection can be configured by using Group Policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Device and Resource Redirection or by using the Session Collection properties box in Server Manager.

Generally, device redirection increases how much network bandwidth RD Session Host server connections use because data is exchanged between devices on the client computers and processes that are running in the server session. The extent of the increase is a function of the frequency of operations that are performed by the applications that are running on the server against the redirected devices.

Printer redirection and Plug and Play device redirection also increases CPU usage at sign-in. You can redirect printers in two ways:

Matching printer driver-based redirection when a driver for the printer must be installed on the server. Earlier releases of Windows Server used this method.
Introduced in Windows Server 2008, Easy Print printer driver redirection uses a common printer driver for all printers.

We recommend the Easy Print method because it causes less CPU usage for printer installation at connection time. The matching driver method causes increased CPU usage because it requires the spooler service to load different drivers. For bandwidth usage, Easy Print causes slightly increased network bandwidth usage, but not significant enough to offset the other performance, manageability, and reliability benefits.

Audio redirection causes a steady stream of network traffic. Audio redirection also enables users to run multimedia apps that typically have high CPU consumption.

Client experience settings

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By default, Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) automatically chooses the right experience setting based on the suitability of the network connection between the server and client computers. We recommend that the RDC configuration remain at Detect connection quality automatically.

For advanced users, RDC provides control over a range of settings that influence network bandwidth performance for the Remote Desktop Services connection. You can access the following settings by using the Experience tab in Remote Desktop Connection or as settings in the RDP file.

The following settings apply when connecting to any computer:

Disable wallpaper (Disable wallpaper:i:0) Does not show desktop wallpaper on redirected connections. This setting can significantly reduce bandwidth usage if desktop wallpaper consists of an image or other content with significant costs for drawing.
Bitmap cache (Bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1) When this setting is enabled, it creates a client-side cache of bitmaps that are rendered in the session. It provides a significant improvement on bandwidth usage, and it should always be enabled (unless there are other security considerations).
Show contents of windows while dragging (Disable full window drag:i:1) When this setting is disabled, it reduces bandwidth by displaying only the window frame instead of all the content when the window is dragged.
Menu and window animation (Disable menu anims:i:1 and Disable cursor setting:i:1): When these settings are disabled, it reduces bandwidth by disabling animation on menus (such as fading) and cursors.
Font smoothing (Allow font smoothing:i:0) Controls ClearType font-rendering support. When connecting to computers running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 and above, enabling or disabling this setting does not have a significant impact on bandwidth usage. However, for computers running versions earlier than Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, enabling this setting affects network bandwidth consumption significantly.

The following settings only apply when connecting to computers running Windows 7 and earlier operating system versions:

Desktop composition This setting is supported only for a remote session to a computer running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Visual styles (disable themes:i:1) When this setting is disabled, it reduces bandwidth by simplifying theme drawings that use the Classic theme.

By using the Experience tab within Remote Desktop Connection, you can choose your connection speed to influence network bandwidth performance. The following lists the options that are available to configure your connection speed:

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Detect connection quality automatically (Connection type:i:7) When this setting is enabled, Remote Desktop Connection automatically chooses settings that will result in optimal user experience based on connection quality. (This configuration is recommended when connecting to computers running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 and above).
Modem (56 Kbps) (Connection type:i:1) This setting enables persistent bitmap caching.
Low Speed Broadband (256 Kbps - 2 Mbps) (Connection type:i:2) This setting enables persistent bitmap caching and visual styles.
Cellular/Satellite (2Mbps - 16 Mbps with high latency) (Connection type:i:3) This setting enables desktop composition, persistent bitmap caching, visual styles, and desktop background.
High-speed broadband (2 Mbps – 10 Mbps ) (Connection type:i:4) This setting enables desktop composition, show contents of windows while dragging, menu and window animation, persistent bitmap caching, visual styles, and desktop background.
WAN (10 Mbps or higher with high latency) (Connection type:i:5) This setting enables desktop composition, show contents of windows while dragging, menu and window animation, persistent bitmap caching, visual styles, and desktop background.
LAN (10 Mbps or higher) (Connection type:i:6) This setting enables desktop composition, show contents of windows while dragging, menu and window animation, persistent bitmap caching, themes, and desktop background.

Chrome Remote Desktop Says Offline

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