If you installed Windows XP SP3, thinking you’ll be ahead of the curve and check out the new features, enhanced security, etc., I’m right there with you.
I like to be up on things as much as possible, and Release Candidates certainly don’t scare me away. I routinely run them on production boxes, and have never had an issue (and if I did, I’d simply reinstall - no big deal).
That’s worked for me for quite awhile, until just last week when apparently the RDP client in XP SP3 RC1 is set to time-bomb. The bad part is, you can’t just download and reinstall the older client because it gives you and error stating the version you’re trying to install is older than the version on your system.
Depending on how you installed SP3 (slipstream vs. vanilla install) you may or may not be able to uninstall SP3.
If that’s the case, I found a pretty easy work-around that had me up and running in no time. Simply copy two files from another XP installation, or Vista installation for that matter.
The two files you’ll need are:
- mstsc.exe
- mstscax.dll
Copy those two files from the c:\windows\system32 of the other machine, and copy them to your c:\windows\system32 directory (or wherever you have windows installed) and you’re good to go!
Thanks Microsoft, for once again making it SO EASY to evaluate your products….
May 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Thanks for the tip… Microsoft can be such boneheads at times… Why would anyone upgrade to SP3, if it had something that they knew was going to expire… I have been using the new version of RDP under SP2 for quite awhile with no problems, however, recently, a couple of our sales people updated their laptops with SP3, and received this problem…
June 8th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Another major problem with SP3 is RDP Connection has been disabled. No easy solution or a workaround. Searching the web for answers only got me as far as messing with the registry !!!