For most, it is a day of thrills and excitement *eye roll*. For system administrators, it is a day of skepticism and uncertainty. It reminds me of an old adage you may be familiar with, “When a door closes, five windows break”.
Microsoft released an update for Remote Desktop Connection (8.1) back in February (KB2830477) to introduce new (native) features from Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 to computers running Windows 7 SP1. There were a few issues that stemmed from the release, including the inability to use smartcard and smartcard devices in RDP sessions. One issue that directly affected our clients was the inability to launch RDP packages from our remote desktop websites. Users could click an application icon, but the packages would not run.
One solution is to uninstall the update (KB2830477) from the respective user’s workstation, thereby reverting back to the original RDP client version. However, this did not resolve the issue for all of our client users. Interestingly, we had a mix of users within the same client organization that either had or did not encounter the issue.
After some extensive debugging, a second solution was found that requires a change to the registry on the user’s workstation. These steps are outlined below:
*Note: Serious issues can occur if registry changes are made incorrectly. Have your system administrator make the required changes, if needed.
1. Open regedit (Click Start -> Run.., then type regedit and hit enter)
2. Navigate to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{FC5988CF-6D6A-4812-ADD9-2DDE4F47346F}\1.0\0\win64
right-click on the ‘win64’ key and select ‘Permissions’.
3. Click the ‘Advanced’ button, then click on the ‘Owner’ tab and change the ownership to your current user.
4. Return to the permissions window and assign the ‘Read’ permission to “Everyone”.
Once these steps were completed, the RDP packages ran for any users encountering the issue. Now let’s just hope our update for the update does not have us spiralling out of control.
Brandon Germaine is an Application Specialist at WebSan Solutions Inc, a Microsoft Dynamics GP Silver Partner 2013 Canadian Channel Elite Awards Winner. Brandon can be reached at