Tue 5 Dec 2006
Microsoft released Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 for Windows XP. Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 (RDC) is already part of Windows Vista. The new RDP client has a couple of new features; some of them seem to work only with Terminal Services in Longhorn Server:
Network Level Authentication
If you enable this feature, RDC 6.0 will ask for your credentials before you connect to a Terminal Server. This requires fewer resources on the remote computer. It also improves security since it prevents you from connecting unintentionally to a remote machine that was setup for malicious purpose.
Server Authentication
This feature is related to Network Level Authentication. You can tell your RDP client to warn you or deny connection if authentication failed.
Resource redirection
Plug and Play devices which support redirection can now be redirected to the Terminal Server session. This didn’t work with my USB stick. I guess, it doesn’t support redirection. Of course, you can access your local memory stick thru a drive letter on the remote computer. This was possible before. But now, you can select each drive separately before you connect.
Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway)
This feature enables RDC to tunnel RDP over HTTPS. As far as I know, this only works with Terminal Services in Longhorn Server. Since HTPS uses port 443, you can close the RDP port (3389) on your firewall. TS Gateway might make VPN superfluous in cases where only an RDP connection is needed. Also check out David Wang’s post about TS Gateway and Vista Server.
TS Remote Programs
If you know Citrix Metaframe (Did Citrix change the name again? They do so every month or so.) then you know this feature for a while already. It allows you to start a so-called published application on the remote computer. Users can only access this program. It seems for them, as if the program was started on the local computer. I suppose, it is also a Longhorn Server feature.
Monitor Spanning
If you are so lucky to have multiple displays, then you can use this feature to span your terminal window across them. Since I don’t belong to those lucky guys, I wasn’t able to test this feature.
Font smoothing
If you have a LCD display, you probably know that you can smooth edges and fonts (display properties, appearance, effects). This feature is disabled in a Terminal Server session which makes your desktop look quite ugly if you are used to smoothing. RDC 6.0 now supports smoothing, but it doesn’t seems to work with Windows Server 2003. I could enable Clear Type on a Longhorn Server beta 2, but I didn’t see any effect, though.
32 bit color
The old RDP client only supports 24 bit colors, RDC supports 32 bit. It didn’t work in my test with Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn Server beta 2. Maybe that only works with the next version of Longhorn Server.
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yep citrix changed the name, it’s now called Citrix Presentation Server.
thanks for writing your stuff, i like it.
Lachy, ah yes, Presentation Server. We’ve one running here, but I forgot the name since I didn’t logon for a while.
If you ask me, they should have kept the name “Winframe”. I was quite impressed by this product the first time, i tried it. So, I have a positive association with that name. I can’t say that about “Metaframe” or “Presenation Server”.
Oh yes, Winframe, now that’s going back quite a long way..! Presentation Server or Metaframe .. it’s all just marketing anyway. i prefer Metaframe, because that’s what it was called when i first started using it.
But i think Winframe would seem a silly name now given all the other products citrix is now pushing on us..
Citrix is good, it keeps me employed.
On the monitor spanning: seems the new RDP has some issues in full screen mode. For example, if you run something in your left monitor while RDP6 is full screen in your right monitor, you will loose the ability to type in dialog boxes randomly. Never seems to happen if RDP6 is in a window, and I used previous RDP versions enough to know this is changed behavior since RDP6 was installed on my system.
Anybody else having this issue? Maybe it’s my video driver.
FWIW, before Presentation Server was MetaFrame was WinFrame, it was WinView. `Course, back then it ran on OS2. But many of the commands (like CHANGE USER) are still exactly the same today in Terminal Server as they were in WinView.
The change from WinFrame to MetaFrame probably had something to do with the deal they struck with Microsoft for the first Terminal Server product. WinFrame shipped complete as a modified version of NT 3.51. MetaFrame was an overlay on NT4 TSE (Terminal Server Edition), which was purchased separately from Microsoft. “Meta” is commonly used to indicate change or derivation, so it sort of fits.
/kenw
One question: how do we get this new “improved” remote desktop to stop guessing the domain name of remote clients?
If you’re connecting to a host in your own domain, it’s not needed. If you’re not, guessing is a waste of time. I want to turn it off!
/kenw
Ken, what do you mean by “guessing the domain name�? If I connect to server in our Windows domain, I just use its computer name.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m referring to the domain name of the user ID you log on with, on the remote host.
It’s not an issue on hosts within your local domain. But I do a lot of administration via VPNs to other domains. Nearly every time I go to log on, I have to specify, delete or change the domain name of user ID, because the new client guesses wrong. On the old RDP client, it was never an issue.
Yeah, so. No solution for the ‘improved’ version huh? I am in the same boat as Ken W, RDP to many remote systems across VPN.
Ken, sorry I missed your last comment somehow. I am still not sure if I understand yours and Dennis’ problem. You mean that the server name shows before your account when you enter the credentials? Then you have to click on “Other user� because the RDP client guessed the name of the server wrong? What name did it guess?
For me, the RDP client assumes the domain of the server itself:
server=BINGO
domain=CASINO
User: Administrator
Password: youwish
Effective login credentials under the new RDP are:
User: Administrator
Password: youwish
Domain: BINGO
Domain: BINGO
Sorry for what looks like SPAM!
On the old RDP you could specify the DOMAIN as part of your login credentials.
Dennis has it right. The RDP client seems to always use the remote host name as the default logon domain name, when the remote host is in a domain other than the local domain. It makes no sense for domain members. And I really have to wonder how that got through QC.
/kenw
Just to clarify a bit more:
You say “Then you have to click on “Other userâ€? because the RDP client guessed the name of the server wrong? What name did it guess?”
The point is, it shouldn’t guess the name of the SERVER at all. In domains, you normally don’t log onto the server — you log onto the domain. When logging onto any system that is a domain member, if it’s not a DC, you can log onto either the local system or the domain. On a DC, you can ONLY log onto the domain. In the latter case, defaulting to the server name can NEVER work — there is no local SAM unless you’re in AD recovery mode, and you’re extremely unlikely to be doing that remotely.
When connecting to a host on a remote domain, the new RDP client gets it wrong in both cases, because it always defaults to using the host name. That default is only appropriate for remote hosts that are not domain members.
/kenw
I think I got your point now. I can’t try it now because I’m on the way, but can’t you just enter your credentials this way: domain-name\logon-name. If you want to logon locally you can use .\logon-name. I think this change is related to the way you login on a Longhorn server. It is like under Vista.
I just tried it now with a VPN connection. Domain-name\log-name works, .\logon-name doesn’t work because the RDP client will use the name of the desktop computer. If you want to logon on a member server and not on the domain you have to enter server-name\logon-name. By the way, the RDP client doesn’t “guess� the computer name. It just uses the last setting. I hope that solves your problem.
Michael, thanks for working through this. It does indeed work as DOMAAIN\USER in the Username: field.
Two points:
1) Michael says “By the way, the RDP client doesn’t “guessâ€? the computer name. It just uses the last setting.” Not sure how he gets that, or what he means by “last”. The computer name that is defaulted — and I’ve never seen it other than a computer name, not domain — is there the first time I connect, and the next time it’s back to the same computer name, regardless of how I override it.
2) The default is virtually always wrong, and would be better if it didn’t default at all. This issue is not that it can’t be overridden — it can. The issue is that it’s a waste of time and shouldn’t be necessary.
With the old client, I didn’t need to enter the domain or computer name at all. With the new one, I have to either override the default and guess or look up the correct spelling of the name of the domain I’m connecting to, or deliberately let it error out, click YES on the error message to connect anyway, so that it fall back to the old behavior (local logon), let that error out and change the logon to domain instead of local, and finally, log on.
It works, but it’s a complete, useless, irritating waste of time, and is sure as %^$#^ isn’t an improvement in any way.
/kenw
Ken, you’re right; the RDP client by default tries to authenticate you on the local server. I agree that it is “suboptimal� that it doesn’t show you the available domains to logon. It is comparable to Vista’s logon screen. I’ve been complaining about it sometime ago.
And to the best of my knowledge, there is no command line option, no registry parameter that does anything to aleviate matters.
As much as anything, I’m curious how it got released with such a stupid user interface. I’d love to hear the explanation.
I use Vista. By and large, I like what they’ve done with it. Nearly all of it makes more sense than this.
/kenw
The new Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 update won’t install on Windows Server 2003 SP2. Anyone can gimme the link to install it on Windows Server 2003 SP2?
Here is a blog entry that describes how to disable the “enter your credentials” question:
http://sogeeky.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-disable-credentials-prompt-of.html
Because this new rdp 6 client sets the “log on to” drop down to local host and then uses “domainname\username” to logon in to the domain, this stuffs up Citrix logons. You login to citrix ok but when you start an application and that app trys to logon to the terminal server, the rdp 6 client has set the “log on to” drop down to the local host, so the users logon fails. They have to manually set the “log on to” drop down to the domain name before they can get it. What a pain! Is there anyway to fix this?
I feel your pain TonyB. We have multi-domains, multi-terminal servers across trusts. Its unviable and unreasonable to expect users to maintain (or remember) which domain to log on to for various terminal servers. This is why the hardcoding of domain:s: in the .rdp file is so critical for us.
But, despite being first reported back in 2006, we are almost in 2008 and nothing, despite an RDP update to 6.0 being released in the meantime.
I have gone back to the old RDP client, much better!
What is the importance of domain in Remote Connection