We are still in the same boat too. We reported it after it was updated over Christmas and we have had 2 attempts (second one successful) even just to obtain some logs from our system so they can look at them. 

We have no answers and are still waiting. It took over a week just to even reattempt getting the logs. 

We are told RDS environments are not supported and agree with you that this is a standard set up for most practices who are larger. 

We will let you know if we do get any updates from sage but are not holding out much hope.

Currently we are having to use one standalone separate PC for payroll which obviously limits the number of people who can work on it to one at a time - not helpful when we are at month end and also in the busiest month for other work for accountants! 

Claire

Any update on this please? I've called Sage who advised they are still looking into different RDS environments trying to do a '1 fix for all' approach.

I asked for periodic updates but they said no, and they will decide how to let people know depending on the type of fix it is.

We are an MSP providing support for multiple clients with this issue on Server 2016 standard. Other clients on 2019 are fine.

Hi, does anybody have an update from Sage about this? Their team took our logs over 2 weeks ago now, and we are still without any answers or updates at all. Payroll has not been working on our server for well over a month...

Hi Claire, we haven't even got a reply to the support call. I have taken the decision to bring our rds server upgrade forward by a few months.

Hi Claire, we have had nothing, its outrageous, they can take support payments then leave us with a broken product, giving excuses for unsupported platforms, which clearly form a large part of their accountancy customer base. This has to be actioned now, get with the times Sage, RDS isn't new its been around for well over 15 years....

@ Sage, please update us on what you have done so far in detail as you have haven't updated us at all....  this shouldn't take this long its getting on for 2 months, this is not acceptable! 

We are having the same issue with RDS 2016, there is clearly a problem Sage don't what to spend time to fix.

Hi Adam, 

We have continued to investigate and look at areas we have seen issues in the SBDDesktop  and have made some changes for the PYE release coming in March.    We have seen some improvements where additional Windows service packs have been applied, and this is also the case where Server 2019 is in use.  We have seen the issues reduced for some of the impacted customers by these changes and also registering some additional files that had not been correctly registered.

We are continuing to test and look at RDS environments a little further throughout the year but recognise some setups are not the same so impacts are not always easily identified.  

Regards

Steve Watmore (PM)

We are having the same issues because we use a remote server. spoke to sage to Sage today and told no date for a fix!

thinking we may have to install programme on one of our PCs which is not ideal, but we cannot delay processing anymore.

If you have the resources (IT department, licences etc) I would recommend a Windows 2022 server with Session Host installed, then provide a Remote Desktop connection for everyone. We've had to do this for approx. 80 users, many more and it's not really viable.

Once installed and working on that session host you can operate the server in RD eval mode for a few months

hi Dean 

any update on this from development team as i have added my comments as well. All companies including MSP's are getting tired of the Sage reply of "We dont support remote installations" line support are being asked to give out.  customers need Sage to be more proactive on this critical issue 

Hi Rod

Not for a while, we were asked to try copying over some DLLs and it helped once or twice but ultimately still really broken and problematic to affect each day, so we had to start putting other plans in plans, forced by Sage and costing lots of money. If i'm honest I think this "try these dlls" was a diversion tactic to buy more time, only done because people were kicking up a fuss on here. I feel this isnt being taken seriously enough, its outrageous. Getting on for 2 and half months without any resolution or anything near, yet they take your support payments and what for? I suggest everyone start looking elsewhere and change software, as they are really not interested IMHO and them breaking their own software and not knowing how to fix it is real eye opening!

Hi, we are in the same boat still as well. We have jumped through the same hoops to try to support Sage in helping us, yet they are not listening to what we are saying - for example that security permissions should not be "Everyone"..... and the supposed DLLs and fixes just do not work. We are at the point of having no option but to go elsewhere - Sage are happy to take our money for support but are not supporting us and we, like everyone else, simply cannot operate like this. 

Hi Claire

Sage seem to think everyone is on a standalone PC with full admin rights, which couldnt be the further from the truth for the vast majority of users. Businesses lock down and secure their networks and users, and rightly so when done properly. Assuming end users can browse and write to the C drive and install patches themselves is ridiculous. Give full control to everyone they say in may articles, place and run this fix from the desktop they say.... ermmmm NO!

If you are a business to business company Sage (which you clearly are), start writing and supporting your software for business not home users! 

I encountered this issue yesterday, which brought me to this thread.

Server 2016 RDS, opening any employee would just crash the software and throw this error.

We also run sage accounts on the same server and realised that if no one else was logged on, we could use this section without issue.

I updated Sage 50 Accounts to the latest version and that seems to have fixed the issue. I'm not sure what effect this has on everything or whether this will work for everyone but if you have access to 50 Accounts, then i suggest installing it/updating it to the latest version. I hope it works for everyone!

Thanks Luke, you suggestion has resolved an issue i was having with payroll crashing.

we have two 2016 RDS servers with sage 50 payroll (v30) and sage 50 accounts (v29) installed on and when accessing employees on one RDS server payroll would crash.

I've just updated accounts to the latest version of v30 and this has resolved the issue.

Late to the party, but we're now on v30 and still seeing the same SBDesktop error on a 2016 RDS Farm. We're lucky, in a sense, that we have a number of RDSH so that I can move the payroll person to a currently working RDSH and reboot the one that just errored. Still....this is an incredibly frustrating issue that has been occurring for a number of months, and appears to be getting more frequent as time goes on.

Does the Sage Accounts update change the version of SBDesktop.exe? I only have Payroll and that instance has v16.0.66.0 of SBDesktop.exe

Same version. 16.0.66.0 

Ok, thanks for checking! The support team told my payroll person that they just need administrator rights and it would probably be fine...seriously? Why are they suggesting such things?! I can't give a user admin rights to remote desktop servers 

Had exactly the same problem. Customer contacted Sage who said upgrading Accounts would make no difference, they did however send me this document - Software closes unexpectedly when installed on a terminal server (sage.com)

I'd seen most of this before and felt like I was getting fobbed off again until I read about an ODBC buffer change.

Increased the buffer from 2gb to 4gb AND increased the time out from 5 to 10 seems to have worked for us.

Can someone else give it a go and see if it sorts it?

I have just made this change to all 4 of my RDSH so will wait and see the outcome. I've not rebooted them yet, so will need to wait until this evening for that.

Just tried it without a reboot and had payroll crashed. 

Scrap that guys, crashing again

Mine has been fine since I made the post about upgrading Accounts to v30 - are you able to give it a go?

Think I going to have to