3

I have some clients that need RDP client 6.1 in order to utilize the new easy print driver. However, the installer doesn't allow it to install on several platforms such as Windows Home Server or Windows Server 2003 because they are not XP. The version check prevents it going further. I'm reasonably confident that it should actually run however and want to try it.

Has anyone done this before? what I should really ask is... what files should I manually copy (backing up originals first)... just the exe or are there lots of dependant dll's that need upgrading too?

Or... is there an inexpensive or free alternative to something like tricerat's screwdrivers? I did look into screwdrivers but felt that it was well overpriced.

hookenz
  • 14,472
  • 23
  • 88
  • 143

3 Answers3

2

Yep this is do-able. You just need to change the compatability mode for the installer to 'Windows XP'. No guarantee that you're not digging yourself into a hole with this, though, as future patches to your 2003 server are going to be layering on top of an unsupported state.

If you're having issues connecting from 2003 to newer RDP servers, there are settings you can alter on the newer RDP hosts that will allow them to accept older clients that run lower levels of channel security. This would be the supported solution, if that's your issue.

Chris Thorpe
  • 9,953
  • 23
  • 33
  • This works. But in the end our customer decided to use a different computer so we were able to use RDP on a supported platform. – hookenz Apr 05 '10 at 23:40
1

Is the installer an MSI? If so, you can remove the version checking by using the Orca tool. I've used it to strip the prerequisite for some applications that wouldn't recognise that DirectX 10 is, in fact, newer than DirectX 3.

As far as alternatives go, we use ThinPrint (or .Print as it's also known). It's around the same price as screwdrivers though, if I remember correctly.

Mark Henderson
  • 68,823
  • 31
  • 180
  • 259
0

I'm pretty sure I did this by just copying the files that would have been installed. As a test you can copy them to a dir like c:\temp. tr

  • Tried that... but mstsc.exe isn't one of the files within – hookenz Mar 30 '10 at 02:08
  • This will work if you get all the correct files. Just install RDP6.1 on a similar XP machine and copy mstsc.exe and mstscax.dll (and their mui versions in the en-us folder) should be good enough (be sure you have the same version of directx on both machines) – Chris S Mar 30 '10 at 03:21