I don’t like cluttered event logs on my SharePoint Servers

What can I say? I prefer nice blue event logs when I check the health of my servers. This helps draw my attention (eyes) to the reds and yellows that might appear. And because I, like most others, connect to these servers via RDP (Remote Desktop), I end up with a bunch of clutter in my logs telling me crap like can’t find matching print driver, etc.”. Well Windows, I never asked you to map my print driver, why do you need to shout from the hilltops about the problem?

Thank you Microsoft for being honest with us about what is going on with our computers. I do appreciate knowing what is/isn’t working. Unlike Apple and others that simply do not tell you when stuff doesn’t work leading us to believe everything is rosy and fine – we aren’t fooled guys! But then again, in situations like this, Microsoft, take a note from the Apple/RIM bullsh*t and maybe back it off a little. I didn’t need to know this information, I didn’t want to know this information as this server (SharePoint) will never need to map to my local desktop attached printer – so find a way to politely suppress it, or offer to. You’ll make more friends that way (by lying to them ;).

The fix is easy. Turn them off (if you don’t care about mapping printers to your SharePoint Servers … why would you?). Note, of course you would not do this on a typical Terminal Server that is intended to provide a complete desktop experience with printing – but for all non-TS Servers, this is just more “noise”.

Figure 1 : Ick. Red Errors Make Sean Sad 🙁

How to turn off unnecessary Terminal Server Logging Chatter for non-TS Application Servers

1. Open Administrative Tools in Windows Server and Choose “Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration” under the “Remote Desktop Services” folder
2. Double click the Transport (RDP-TCP)
3. Choose the Client Settings Tab
4. Set the settings that work for you (Figure 5 below is what works best for me, I still like having a clipboard, for example)

Figure 2 : Launch the session host configuration

Figure 3 : Select the RDP Transport (Double Click)

Figure 4 : Properties before changes

Figure 5 : I prefer these settings

Figure 6 : Choose Okay, this will take effect next time