How to turn on the Terminal Services Session Directory logging service

To troubleshoot Session Directory for Terminal Services servers, you can use the Terminal Services Session Directory logging feature. This article describes how to turn on this feature.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

1. Stop the Terminal Services Session Directory service.
2. In the registry, locate the following key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tssdis\Parameters
3. If the Parameters key does not exist, create it.
4. Add the following DWORD value:
   TraceOutputMode
5. Select the option you want:
   • 0 (no output)
   • 1 (output to debugger)
   • 3 (output to log file)
6. Start the Terminal Services Session Directory Service. If you selected option 3 in step 5, Terminal Service Session Directory placess the output in a log file that is named Tssdis.log under following folder.
   1. For Windows Server 2008 based Terminal Services Session broker, under %systemroot%\system32\tssesdir folder.
   2. For Windows Server 2003 based Terminal Service Session Directory service, under %systemroot%\system32 folder.

The Terminal Services Session directory log file contains the following entries:

• Session Directory service started
• Session Directory service stopped
• Machine joins session directory
• Machine leaves session directory
• User logs in
• User disconnects
• User reconnects
• User logs out
• Session Directory-related event log messages.