Windows RDP error 3489661694 when connecting from a Mac, connecting from Windows fails without any message
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/05/16
Sometimes I connecting to various Windows systems over RDP fails. On Windows the mstsc (Remote Desktop Connection) application recognises the server has a certificate, presents you with a login dialog, then just stops without any message.
Connecting from Mac OS X edition of Microsoft Remote Desktop does give you error message “The server denied the logon with reason: 3489661694”.
So far I’ve had this only with physical machines running Windows 7 and 8.1 both after a Windows Update did a reboot taking a very long time and I wasn’t physically present to see what was happening (hey: that’s why I use RDP in the first place).
Somehow during the reboot, the server side of Remote Desktop (which is just termsrv.dll in the context of an svchost.exe instance) is in a limbo state: it does listen, but won’t get you any further.
No chance of rebooting either, as most prosumer physical systems lack out-of-band management that server-like systems have.
I found one relevant Japanese post from someone who had the same from Android RDP.
Too bad I could not find anything in the eventlogs, not even why the update took that long (the Windows 8.1 system took from about 23:00 in the evening until 15:00 in the afternoon to get booted).
–jeroen
via:
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
Sam said
This error happened to me while Windows was restarting to install some updates.
jpluimers said
Cool to know it can also happen when restarting (i.e. not just when
updating). Thanks!WarrenP said
What version of OS X and what version of the RDP client is this?
I use the Mac OS X Microsoft RDP client all the time without incident. You might be able to get some more details by running the client inside ktrace.
jpluimers said
The current RDP client from Microsoft. It gives error messages when the Windows version just times out. So having the error codes is actually a good thing.