Taskbar Disappears Over Remote Desktop Connection When Outside Local Network
I had the same issue.
The explorer.exe task crashed and the result was the situation described in the question above.
To solve this from RDP I used ctrl + alt + end (twice) then I selected the Task Manager option from the menu and from there I restarted the explorer.exe process by selecting File -> Run new task (I entered "explorer.exe" in the open text box).
Searching the problem, I saw other people with this problem, though on different versions of Windows, but the solution was in same.
- Open Task Manager
- Kill the explorer.exe process
- Restart explorer.exe from the File -> Run menu option in Task Manager
Source
Or....
- Press Ctrl + Alt + End
- Press Log off
- Then start a new RDP session and re-log in