Galin Iliev's blog

Software Architecture & Development

Remote Desktop MMC Snap-in in Windows Vista Trick

20. February 2007 Galcho Misc, Window Server System (13)

I use Virtual PC and Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) a lot in my daily acitivities.

Recently I found that there is very nice tool built-in Windows that allows you to manage miltiple RDC.

You can start this MMC console by typing in Run command window (Win+R) tsmmc.msc.

for more detailed way to display RDC MMC Snap-in see MS TechNet's Add the Remote Desktops snap-in article.

So far so good. But I am running Windows Vista on my laptop so I need to use on it.

But guess what?! I tried it in similar way as described in Add the Remote Desktops snap-in but I was not able to add this snap-in. There is no such file as tsmmc.msc.I found this thread in TechNet forums saying there are bunch of dlls in vista that need to be registered using regsvr32 in order to be used. Unfortunately even after registering these dlls I was not able to access RDC MMC snap-in.

So I decided to try in hard way :)

After some DLL research I copied mstsmmc.dll from Windows 2003 machine to my vista box and  registered using following command:

regsvr32 mstsmmc.dll 

and Bingo. That's it. There is Remote Desktops snapp-in in the list

and of course you are able to start tsmmc.msc (also copied from Win 2003 machine)

You can download these files from the link below. Enjoy

RDC_MMC_Snap-in_Vista.zip (75.47 KB)
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Comments (13) -

  • martin

    4/3/2007 8:54:17 PM | Reply

    This would be a killer ap.  I just tried the above in Vista, but with no success.  Copied both files to c:\windows\system32 and then ran "regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\mstsmmc.dll".  Registration was fine, but once I opened mmc, the snap-in was not listed.  Similarly, trying to run tsmmc.msc failed with "MMC could not create the Snap-in".

    Any suggestions.
    Many Thanks!

  • Alberto Chocron

    4/5/2007 2:12:52 AM | Reply

    I got the same problem as you, if someone can just gives us and idea of what it could be.

  • Galcho

    4/5/2007 3:25:35 PM | Reply

    I tried the method I described on 4 Vista boxes and on three of them worked fine. Vista editions were Business and Ultimate
    Recently I found an issue when snap-in was added but instead remote screen web page is shown saying “Navigation to the webpage was canceled”.

    The situation you have is new to me  What is your Vista edition?

    When you execute  
    Dir msts*.*  
    in c:\Windows\System32>
    what is the result?

    Mine Is
       600,576 mstsc.exe
    1,866,240 mstscax.dll
       161,280 mstsmmc.dll

    Try to do again:
    Regsvr32 mstsmmc.dll
    Regsvr32 mstscax.dll   --not sure about this but won’t harm  

    I tried several times register/unregister mstsmmc.dll and I can assure you this is dll that contains remote desktops snap-in

  • Max

    5/15/2007 1:29:53 PM | Reply

    The snap-in appears on my mmc's list, but I cannot connect to any server on my LAN... I tryed to connect to Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP... without success!

  • JT

    11/1/2007 2:58:35 PM | Reply

    For future reference for anyone else looking at this, there is one step missing that is causing the "MMC could not create the Snap-in" issue (and the issue of Remote Desktop not showing in the snap-ins list in MMC). When you run regsvr32 mstsmmc.dll, you must run that as an administrator. Go to C:\Windows\System32, right click cmd.exe and select "Run as Administrator". Then run the regsvr32 command.

    That should do it! Thanks Galcho for the great post!

  • wow gold

    12/5/2007 6:54:37 AM | Reply

    Thank you very much, I managed to let a learning opportunity!

  • wow gold

    12/5/2007 6:56:19 AM | Reply

    Thank you very much, I managed to let a learning opportunity!

  • Kevin

    12/23/2007 11:53:53 PM | Reply

    There is one more dll, mstsmhst.dll, that needs to be copied from windows 2003 and registerd - this will fix the error “Navigation to the webpage was canceled”.

  • martin

    1/20/2008 7:22:22 AM | Reply

    gracias gracias, esto si funciona. me han ahorrado mucho trabajo

    saludos....

  • LouP

    4/29/2008 8:41:50 PM | Reply

    Christopher THANKS!

    Your extra DLL fixed my “Navigation to the webpage was canceled” problem. Now I am one step closer to not having to run XP Pro in a Virtual Machine in order to be productive

  • Joel

    5/8/2008 7:17:23 PM | Reply

    Why not just download the Win2003 SP2 Admintools.msi file from MS?  It will allow you to use all the admin tools in Vista that you could use in XP without issue.  
    www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

    Joel

  • Karl

    8/21/2008 2:43:08 AM | Reply

    I found this built into my Vista Ultimate installation.  From the "Control Panel"\"Programs and Features" select "Turn Windows Freatures on or off" on the left side of the window.  A tree of Windows features appears.  Scroll down to "Remote Server Administration Tools"\"Role Administration Tools" and check "Terminal Services Tools" check box as well as any other features which interest you.  After clicking [OK] and Windows churns for a while, you will find the Terminal Services/Remote Desktop tools under Administation tools.

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