Monday, April 7, 2008

Remote Desktop Connection has Expired (Pre-Release Version)

MICRO$OFT STRIKES AGAIN...
Today, many Remote Desktop users were struck with the following message:

"The Pre-Release Version of Remote Desktop Connection has expired. To download the full version of Remote Desktop Connection, Go to Windows update or contact your system administrator"

This is a result of installing the recently released XP SP3 RC2 from Microsoft. Apparently they packaged the new Remote Desktop Connection in SP3 with an expiration date (assuming 4/7/2008). Thanks so much for the warning Microsoft! This came on as a big Monday morning surprise to many IT pros as well as home server users (WHS).

The fix?
I have seen many posts where people are uninstalling SP3, which works however rather extreme.

As a temporary workaround, you can simply copy the previous version of the following two files into your windows System32 folder. You can copy these files from another pre-SP3 XP machine or simply search your local hard drive and use a previous version which will be in a previous $NtServicePackUninstall$ folder or in the DLLCACHE folder:
mstscax.dll
mstsc.exe

Then execute the mstsc.exe (which is the same exe name as the expired version). This effectively rolls back your Remote Desktop version to the previous version.



33 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you the cut and paste put me back online

Anonymous said...

Couldn't find a DLLCACHE folder but found the two files in a $NtServicePackUninstall$ folder. Works a treat, thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this advice - it worked perfectly. Was scratching my head as to how I was going to get around this one!

Regards

Mark

Brad said...

Thanks, worked great...

Anonymous said...

Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Very helpful!!! Worked like a charm! Thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

wow really worked gr8..

thanks buddy

Unknown said...

Worked charmingly....
Thanks dude.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't work for me. Allows me to overwrite the files (they are different sized) then still gives the expired message.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much!!
really helpful.

Anonymous said...

It works if I quickly double click on mstsc.exe after copying it over to the System32 folder; otherwise the file changes back to the original one...right before my eyes. Is there a service running in the background that is doing this?

FixingStuff said...

dougman...
This is a function of Windows File Protection. See more info about it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/wfp.mspx#E4H

It could be that you are using an old un-signed version.

Try this. At command line:
sfc /purgecache

then replace the files again.

This could also be why it didn't work for Anonymous above...

Anonymous said...

Thanks..relieved my frustration caused by the install of new download or update being refused because the SP3 version was present.

Anonymous said...

Thank You! Merci! Danke! Gracias! Grazie! .. and in my language: MULTUMESC!

Anonymous said...

Thank you a million, it worked like a bomb,within seconds I can resolve all IT issues

Paulus

Anonymous said...

It works but when I connect to my machine not only is the colors are gone (black/white) but my resolution is limited while before I had full resolution to cover my entire monitor and my desktop look like my real desktop. Any suggestion?

Anonymous said...

Thanks a million, have been trying to fix this for weeks but WFP just kept putting the old files back.

Anonymous said...

Thanx a lot!!! You made my almost miserable day to become the better one.

Anonymous said...

Thanx a lot.

Anonymous said...

Awesome, thanks for the post and the purgecache comment, and thanks to microsoft for making people go through this...

Unknown said...

thats great ....
Its working...

Anonymous said...

hey! youre a great help!

Anonymous said...

Eish,,,Thanx Chief u're a clever Man. :-) :-)

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot. Its working now.

Anonymous said...

This fixed the issue - You are Good! - Thank You for your Help! :)

Dee said...

Great Great great tip...
Thanks a ton..
Was really struggling to get over this problem...

Kap'n Krunch said...

thank you, especially the purge cache idea!

Anonymous said...

Thanks to your solution. It has worked perfectly. Great work you are doing

Anonymous said...

you can double click on mstsc.exe in the C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$

or copy both file out to whereever and use it.

Thanks

man, MS... my work laptop broke and had to use my home machine to get to work and of course have not use mstsc for a long while from this machine....

thanks again.

Anonymous said...

u can change your system date to a any date before April 2008 to make it work temporarily.

..life sucks

Anonymous said...

Thank you SO MUCH. This worked perfectly. I was about to uninstall the SP3 for Windows XP. I had read about replacing a couple of system files, but I didn't know I could find those files in my own system. Thanks for the detailed and clear explanation.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely fantastic!!

This worked:
Try this. At command line:
sfc /purgecache

then replace the files again.

Thanks a lot !

Anonymous said...

Thanks Its worked