Unable to connect via RDP to a Server 2003 R2 server

I came across a problem today with a rather aged Server 2003 R2 server. I rebooted it as part of some troubleshooting, and after the reboot found I was unable to connect to the server via RDP. So, I jumped on the VM console to check various things, the Terminal Services service was started, but I did force a stop of this and start it again. Checked over the registry to ensure the listening port hadn’t been changed for any reason. Checked the terminal services configuration to ensure the connection wasn’t disabled and there were no strange limits imposed on the connection, but all looked normal. I did try disabling and re-enabling the connection, but still no luck. When I did a netstat -ao and looked for anything listening on 3389, there was nothing at all listening, no Terminal Services or any conflicting service was listening on port 3389.

In the end, after a bit of a search on Google and a bit of checking, one suggestion mentioned was to re-register the Terminal Services DLL. So using the following command regsvr32 remotepg.dll I tried this and the registration failed. Tried to un-register it first with regsvr32 /u remotepg.dll but again this failed. So, I came to the conclusion there might be a problem with the DLL. So, I copied the DLL from another working machine, un-registered and re-registered the DLL again, which succeeded this time round. Then after a reboot, I was hopeful, but still no joy. Final, checking the Terminal Services configuration again I noticed that now the connection was disabled, right clicking and going to All Tasks and enabling the connection, I was then able to connect via RDP. Success