PCMONTASK on Remote Desktop Session Hosts

[JeffVandervoort]

Typically, in a Remote Desktop hosting environment, we want to keep the per-user memory footprint as small as possible. 8 MB doesn't seem like much on a typical desktop or server, but on an RDSH, every byte counts, because RDSH capacity is generally determined by RAM.

My understanding from another thread, here, is that PCMONTASK was added for the screen view feature, and that's all it's used for.

Even at 8MB, this one task increases the memory footprint of an RDPINIT session here by about 50%, and is far larger than any of the other per-user "overhead" tasks we run here. By "overhead", I mean the mimimum background processes that are not what the user logs on in order to run, but are needed to maintain the session, security, application virtualization, etc., and which run in the user's context.

The task is launched, whether or not the Screen View option is selected. And we do not use Screen View here at all.

I'd ask that the registry entry in HKLM\...\Run to be deleted if the Screen View option is de-selected. That's a best practice, anyway: No unnecessary processes running. And it might be a good idea to add "(Requires approx. 8-9 MB per user; not recommended for Remote Desktop Session Hosts)" to the Screen View control's caption in PC Monitor Manager.

Going forward, if you have other plans for PCMONTASK, please make sure the features that require it are identified in the UI, and make sure that the other parts of PC Monitor will work without it.

[Marius]

2.8 will support this. It adds an option to disable pcmontask - when enabled screen view and computer lock will no longer be available.

[Marius]

2.8 beta 1 available to download on the forum will allow you to disable pcmontask.