Posts tagged Windows XPe

Windows XP(e) refusing to connect to a terminal server

Jul 23rd

Posted by Christian in Life

Today a error message reappeared I thought I wouldn’t see again. We use Wyse Thin Clients and 2X running on two terminal servers, to provide the thin clients with applications. Now, once a while one of the thin clients (not all at once, just a single one) refuse to connect to the terminal server jabbing about this:

The remote computer disconnected the session because of an error in the licensing protocol.

The error message you get from the 2X client ain’t the slightest bit more helpful.

Die Remote-Sitzung wurde unterbrochen, da kein Terminalserver-Lizenz Server zur Bereitstellung einer Lizenz verfügbar ist.

I remember the solution being not so trivial with the thin clients. As it turns out, Microsoft does have a solution for that kind of problem.

“Simply” open up the registry, and clean out HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing. That is the place where the remote desktop client saves the obtained terminal server licensing key.

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GPO (behind the scenes)

Jun 5th

Posted by Christian in Life

Well, to begin with we had this really weird problem that the thin clients as well as the terminal server would only load user based group policy if you are a member of the group of local administrators. While that’s ok for the thin clients (users can’t actually change something unless they log in as “Administrator” – don’t ask me why), it’s a real no-no on the terminal server.

We tried redoing *everything* (that is, starting with the domain, then terminal server and after that the thin clients) and yet nothing changed, it didn’t work either. That’s what I’ve been doing the last 2 weeks. Up till now, I always thought a user would have access to the ntuser.dat (that is HKEY_CURRENT_USER), if his NTFS permissions would be correct. But nooooooooooooooooooooo, Microsoft had to introduce another layer of permissions.

Old permissions on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Old permissions on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Once you change it to be proper (as in remove the dead user entry and add a group that actually gets you somewhere), it’s all starting to work!

New permissions on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

New permissions on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

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