As always, report bugs right here for this beta / release candidate. Your help has been immeasurable! Thank you for testing!

Your auto-updaters should pick it up, but if not, download it here...

UPDATE: LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE

<click> the stopwatch has started ticking... No major bugs in a week or so and we might have a gold version ready!

2.0.7 Changelog...

- Second release candidate... Let's try this again! Hopefully the bug count will again slow down!
- Fixed an issue where the reconnection counter wouldn't reset to zero if a connection automatically reconnected to a remote session more than once before deliberately disconnecting and reconnecting (or closing the tab).
- If you click the download icon from the automatic update feature and close RD Tabs, the update will no longer terminate when the application closes. This is not true for the manual "RD Tabs Update" feature since that is an embedded browser object.
- The automatic update will now show a pop-up balloon in the tasktray if you have the tasktray icon enabled.
- Fixed a bug where if you entered full screen mode and the gray bars appeared to fill the empty space between the desktop and the tab pane, if you exited full screen mode, sometimes the gray bars would stay, even though the desktop exactly fits the tab pane.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the active tab would lose keyboard (but not mouse) focus if you entered / exited full screen mode, captured the screen, or hid / unhid the menu bar using a Sys Key.
- Fixed a bug where when using arrow keys in the Tab Thumbnail Selector, the focus would not follow the selected thumbnail.
- The Tab Thumbnail Selector now has its own tab in the options. You can also enable two new features. One is where the active tab is automatically scrolled down to and highlighted when entering the thumbnail view (Automatically select the active tab after entering Tab Thumbnail Selector view). The other highlights the selected thumbnail (the one with the current keyboard focus) even if you are not using the keyboard -- in other words, the red box around the thumbnail is always visible (Always highlight the thumbnail with keyboard focus (even if you are not using the keyboard)).
- Added a few missing icons in the menus.
- Fixed a bug where if you disconnected and then reconnected (using the reconnect button, which ignores any new settings you put in the connection properties), the remote desktop resolution would not always be in sync with the size of your application window if you had the display screen size set to "Fit to application window." (basically it would be set at whatever resolution you first connected to with)
- Fixed a bug where if you disconnected and then reconnected (using the reconnect button again) and then saved the connection as a favorite, it would take the properties of whatever has changed in the connection properties dialog INSTEAD of using the actual settings which were in use (the previous successful connection a la the reconnect button).
- I have changed the behavior of a connecting tab. Previously in 2.0 (like in older versions of RD Tabs), after successfully connecting, input focus would automatically switch to the tab. Now you can choose if you want it to or not. Under the "Connection" tab in RD Tabs Options, look for the checkbox "After successfully connecting, tab will automatically steal input focus and set itself as active tab"
- Fixed a bug where if you attempted to enter the "Tabs" menu by using a keyboard shortcut and if it had never been opened by mouse clicking before, it would be empty and inaccessible by keyboard.
- Fixed some display issues with the SysKey Notification.
- Started to update the documentation help file. Consider this version a rough draft.
- Updated the "save passwords" warning message to remind users of the Profile Clean-up Utility.
- Fixed a bug where if you clicked to close a tab, cancelled the close in the warning message, then attempted to close the tab again at any point in the future, the close button wouldn't respond and there actually would be no way to close the tab short of exiting the application entirely.
- Added a few missing keyboard shortcuts (of the "&" variety) in the menus.
- Changed the "Floating Tab" icon for the taskbar so you can distinguish it easier from the main RD Tabs application.

I'm not entirely sure if this is RDTabs fault because it's so hard to reproduce, but I got this msg from RDTabs now: http://www.transmogrifier.de/temp/rdtabsresources.png  + I wasn't able to open any additional window anymore. Closing RDTabs helped. As you can see there are only 2 Tabs open. I had the impression of Resource Leaks in previous versions as well, when running RDTabs conencted to 6 pcs for multiple days. At some point, I wasn't even able to open additional notepads anymore. Did you add this msg in this new version? It never appeared before. I'll try this ms knowledgebase hack. But I think my resource problems started with using RDTabs. Might be a coincidence though, hard/takes time to reproduce + you never know what other problems exactly do after a new version gets released ...

RD Tabs 2.0 does consume more resources than RD Tabs 1.x. This is mainly due to there being more features available. I've cut down the amount of window handles used by most of the controls by just directly drawing to the panels instead of creating labels and other objects which want their own window handle.

The error message was added in 2.x, but i can't remember which version off-hand. I'd say maybe 2.0.3 or 2.0.4.

RD Tabs is pretty good now about resource allocation in-so-far as memory leaks are concerned. First, being in .Net, the majority of resource allocation and freeing is down by the framework itself with the garbage collector. Second, the microsoft remote desktop libraries don't clean-up like how the framework likes, so instead of destroying and recreating them (which DOES cause memory leaks), I disable them and cache them for future use. This does keep about two or three window handles reserved, but it's still less than a full tab (which has about 23-40 window handles each). Anyway, from my tests, I can open about 70 or 80 tabs concurrently before I start approaching the desktop heap or window handle limit. And I keep RD Tabs open for days and weeks, although I will admit I haven't kept 2.0.7 open for more than a few hours so far since I shutdown this weekend at work.

Now two or three tabs really shouldn't cause that error. You may want to check for secondary causes. How many other applications are loaded? How many of them are allocating innordinate amount of window handles? You can check in Task Manager. Add the columns "Handles." Now, of course, this is all handles, not just window handles, but if a process has some 8000 handles open, you can best bet it's closing in on its per-process window handle limit quickly and also consuming a HUGE amount of the desktop heap (which tends to be more limiting than the raw window handle count).

Here's a test. Next time RD crashes, close it completely down and try opening like 30 or 40 notepads or a big MMC or any other app with lots of controls embedded within it (IE doesn't count because it uses windowless controls for nearly everything and hence is VERY low on window handle and desktop heap resources). Just FYI, windowless controls are not available in the dotnet framework, hence all the tweaking I have to do to get RD to lose some weight! Also, off a fresh reboot, how many tabs can you open before you induce a crash in RD Tabs (I did 76 this AM). I also tried connecting to about 50 computers simultaneously and everything got pretty slow (to be expected), but I didn't fill the heap or run out of handles.

I had a workstation at work that had a driver (of all things) that ate up all the desktop heap. it was for a docking station for a laptop. it just filled the heap and error messages couldn't even pop up. i had to look at the event log from another computer to see the dreaded "can't create window handle" error!

When the 3.5 framework comes out, I'm going to look into trimming RD Tabs down by using WPF, which has (finally) a slew of windowless controls for dotnet apps! However, the remote desktop connection itself is a hog and eats desktop heap on its own, so RD will never be ubertrim.

Anyway, keep me updated on this. If there's a resource problem, I definitely want to fix it!!!!

Ok. Next time I get this problem I'll try open the tasmgr and look at the handles of the process. Didn't know that the taskmgr is able to show thei information. I'll keep you updated. If there is a resource problem, I'ld like you to fix it :)

For WPF, .net3 ist out and it is already able to do WPF. The only strange this is: In order to be able to create such Applications, you have to install the WPF addon to vs2005 and that is still in beta. Pretty strange. But I tried making a WPF "app" that consists of a window with some fading effect and it runs on other pcs as soon as I install .net3 framework - nothing else is needed.

Oh cool! I thought you had to download 3.5 beta to get WPF to work on the client side (either that or run Vista obviously). Thanks for the tip! I'll probably still wait for the next gen visual studio before I dig too deep. I just got through one huge re-design with 2.0. Not looking forward to another redesign. 😉 Of course all i really need to lighten the load is just to be able to convert checkboxes and radio buttons and panels into handleless controls, so maybe it's not really as much of a redesign as it seems! By version 2.1, the status bar will be converted into a handleless control. That's my next big step. That's about 15 handles per tab right there for all the labels, menu items, and so forth.

FYI, I contacted a few of my friends who are beta testing (sys admins too) and they both were like "I didn't even know RD Tabs had a tab limit." They actively run probably 10-20 tabs concurrently on average. So apparently it's working well on other systems...

I did a test again today and still got 75+ tabs open concurrently with about 40 actually connected to remote desktops. After about 30 on my work PC the CPU usage goes so high it gets hard to just move the mouse and click on things. In RD Tabs' defense, remote desktopping is pretty heavy for a thin client, so 30+ is a lot of load. Not to mention the bulk of the CPU usage is directly from the Microsoft-written components. 😉 Also my work PC is a PoS.

And when was the last time you had 70 IE tabs open? LOL that'd be torture... 😉 😉

Yes IE with 70 tabs is evil. But actually, I don't understand why? I'ld think that having 100 websites in memory should fit easily nowadays and only one of them has to be displayed at a time - while displaying a single webpage actually is fast. Really strange. That's something all browsers I tested so far have in common. As soon as you open too many tabs, they get really slow. IE, Firefox, Opera, not much of a difference.

I tried the registry hack discribed in the ms kb article. Afterwards my windows didn't boot anymore. I had to revert to the last restore point that worked ...

I compiled a small .net3 wpf test app that just displays a partially transparent window. I did it to test if it works on different systems. You can try as well if you are interested: http://www.transmogrifier.de/temp/UntitledProject1.zip . It's nothing fancy, really just a "hat is actually needed to run such an app on different systems"-experimental exe. And it turned out, .net3 is everything that's needed. 🙂

The problem with browsers is that it's not just HTML anymore. They have to run all the javascript (which, afaik, is not just-in-time compiled, so it's purely interpreted), do the CSS transforums, run a half dozen Flash plugins, run the optional toolbars, constantly touch back with servers during AJAX apps, and so on and so on... <GrumpyOldMan>Back in my day, all we had was Mosaic and a 14.4k modem! The page loaded linearly, didn't display the text portions until the graphics were done, and took 30 minutes to traverse links and WE LIKED IT!</GrumpyOldMan>

Anyway, thanks for the test app!

RD Tabs 2.0.8 out soon... Found a few more odd bugs (mostly pretty rare)

Hi

I just wanted to write in and say THANKS AGAIN for this neat app. I have been using 2.0.7 since it was released and it's really cool. No crashes so far and it is working great. I even used the Pane feature today and LOVED it. I've posted a few small(hopefully) requests in the suggestions forum in case you might be able to fit them in.

Huh, RDTabs 2.0.7 jsut forgot all Favorits. I didn't upgrade or anything. Just between closing and reopening some time later, the favorits were all gone :(

Additional to that, it keeps telling me upon connect that it cannot verify the identity of the computer. "This problem can occur if 1) The remote computer is running a version of Windows that is earlier than Windows Vista (that's true, server 2003). 2) the remote computer is configured to support only the RDP security layer." ?!?!?! There were some windows updates on friday - maybe that's related?

As for your favorites, check your appdata folders (local AND remote) for avian_waves\rdtabs_fdash89fhsda9fuhsa9fhsfhsadf9ha\user.config (the "fashfsah" stuff is a randomly generated hash). if you switched from local to roaming profile, this may happen. or if you ran the profile cleaning utility and nuked the config of the version of rd tabs you are currently using. user.configs shouldn't just disappear. and RD Tabs only deletes favorites during the "delete" operation in the favorites manager (meaning there's no clean-up feature to mess things up). The entire user.config going away (or becoming misplaced) could explain the second part of you problem as rd tabs reverted to default settings...

the good news is that the profile cleaner is SUPPOSED to move stuff to the recycle bin... the bad news is if it wasn't the profile cleaner <gulp> it might be a bug or another app!

As for the identity verifcation... That's easy to fix. This is where 2003 SP2 and Vista RDP support TLS to enhance security of RDP. Under the "advanced" tab in the connection properties you'll see "Server security and authentication." The three options are Legacy, attempt TLS, and require TLS. you probably have "require TLS" selected. If you have not set up your remote desktop servers to use certificates, then you need to use "legacy" or "attempt" although "attempt" will bug you every time it doesn't find a certificate (security warning). Vista automatically uses a self-signed certificate, so unless you have a CA running or use a commercial certificate, you'll still get warnings (although the connection will work) if TLS is enabled.

krash_control - thanks for the compliments and glad to hear it's working! Once I get some Vista stuff (app manifest stuff) straightened out, 2.0.8 will be out which I'm fairly confident will be "out of beta" aka RTW unless Marc's disappearing config problem ends up being a serious bug!!!

As for your favorites, check your appdata folders (local AND remote) for avian_waves\rdtabs_fdash89fhsda9fuhsa9fhsfhsadf9ha\user.config (the "fashfsah" stuff is a randomly generated hash). if you switched from local to roaming profile, this may happen. or if you ran the profile cleaning utility and nuked the config of the version of rd tabs you are currently using. user.configs shouldn't just disappear. and RD Tabs only deletes favorites during the "delete" operation in the favorites manager (meaning there's no clean-up feature to mess things up). The entire user.config going away (or becoming misplaced) could explain the second part of you problem as rd tabs reverted to default settings...

the good news is that the profile cleaner is SUPPOSED to move stuff to the recycle bin... the bad news is if it wasn't the profile cleaner <gulp> it might be a bug or another app!

As for the identity verifcation... That's easy to fix. This is where 2003 SP2 and Vista RDP support TLS to enhance security of RDP. Under the "advanced" tab in the connection properties you'll see "Server security and authentication." The three options are Legacy, attempt TLS, and require TLS. you probably have "require TLS" selected. If you have not set up your remote desktop servers to use certificates, then you need to use "legacy" or "attempt" although "attempt" will bug you every time it doesn't find a certificate (security warning). Vista automatically uses a self-signed certificate, so unless you have a CA running or use a commercial certificate, you'll still get warnings (although the connection will work) if TLS is enabled.

Now that you mention it, I actually installed a Certificate from CACert on friday. I didn't think this could be the cause. The mstsc.exe doesn't report the identity issue. Looking at its advanced tab, it is set to "Always connect, even if authentication fails ...

To my favorits: I searched through Application Data and found two of those directories. One contains subdirectories for 1.1.2.0 and 1.1.3.0, the other for all version from 1.1.4.0 onwards. The 2.0.7.0 subdirectory contains a user.config that, looking at it with notepad, only contains settings, no favorits. the 2.0.6.0 directory however still contains a large user.config with my favorites in it. So I copied the user.config from 2.0.6.0 to 2.0.7.0 and the favorites are there again 🙂 Don't know if some setting is missing for 2.0.7.0 in the user.config now though.

Back to the previous issue: Looking at the settings of all my favorites, the security was set to legacy. I never switched the default settings of RDTabs to Attemplt TLS. But now they are at attempt TLS. It's like that option switched automatically - maybe because of me installing that certificate? May that be the course for my favorites to disappear as well?

It would really surprise me if the certificate caused the corruption. It sounds like the user.config did get corrupted, where RD Tabs then reverted to defaults ("attempt tls" is the new default as per RDP 6.0 guidelines). copying the older file to the new one should have fixed the issues. not sure how it got corrupted in the first place, however! ive never seen that happen. hoping it's just a transient weird issue. the good news is that with batch editing if any favorites get messed up, it's super easy to fix it! glad to hear you got your favorites back. may want to export them for safe keeping just in case this crops up again. if you export as RDTSF file format, it's encrypted and relatively secure, even if passwords are included. if you enable EFS ontop of that, you are really very secure.

Just for good measure, i'd use the Profile Clean-up Utility to nuke those 1.1.x folders since they may have unencrypted passwords if you have been saving your passwords!