Hello world,
Next stop into our journey in bringing back legacy MMC console in Windows 2012 R2 and later operating system, we will today quickly show how to bring back the tsconfig.msc console. By now, you probably have understood how to bring them back. You simply need to grab the correct files and add some additional registry key to have them working. If you are interested in bringing other TS console back on Windows 2012 R2 and later, have a look at the following posts
- RDS – Get TsAdmin.msc console running on Windows 2012 and later….
- RDS 2012 R2 – Bring back Remote Desktops MMC Console
So, let’s keep the momentum and let’s move on…..
Overview
Windows 2008 R2 Terminal Services was providing a bunch of administration console that where used to manage the Terminal Service Infrastructure. When Microsoft introduced the new RDS infrastructure with Windows 2012 R2, some people were missing some of the options that were available with these tools and not brought back in the modern RDMS (remote Desktop management service) central admin tool to manage the remote desktop infrastructure. We have seen how to bring back the tsadmin console which indeed provide a nice GUI interface to perform some tasks that are not available in the new RDMS tool by default (i.e. remotely end process, connect to remote server and check sessions,…). Bringing back the Remote Desktops MMC console is even easier as we simply need to add some registry keys and we do not need to find some needed dlls.
Now, on this post, we will show how to bring back the tsconfig.msc console and see if there are any benefit of doing this….. So, let’s move to the next step
Bring tsconfig.msc back on Windows 2019 Server
Step 1 – Get necessary files from a Windows 2008 R2 server
First, we need to get our hands on a windows 2008 R2 server and we need to grab the following files
c:\Windows\System32\tsconfig.dll c:\Windows\System32\tsconfig.msc c:\Windows\System32\wts.dll
You will need to copy these files in your Windows 2019 Server and place them also in the c:\Windows\System32\ directory .
Step 2 – Create tsconfig registry file
You will need to add some information into the registry in order to have the tsconfig mmc console working properly. You will need to copy the text below in a text file and save it with .reg extension. We have saved our file as tsconfig.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns\FX:{80aaa290-abd9-9239-7a2d-cf4f67e42128}]
"ApplicationBase"=hex(2):43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,\
73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,00,00
"About"="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"
"VersionStringIndirect"="@C:\\Windows\\System32\\umcRes.dll,-107"
"ProviderStringIndirect"=hex(2):40,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,\
00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,\
5c,00,75,00,6d,00,63,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,2d,\
00,31,00,30,00,32,00,00,00
"SmallFolderBitmapIndirect"=hex(2):40,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,\
64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,\
00,5c,00,75,00,6d,00,63,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,\
2d,00,31,00,32,00,30,00,00,00
"NameString"="Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration"
"HelpTopic"=hex(2):25,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,72,00,6f,00,6f,00,\
74,00,25,00,5c,00,68,00,65,00,6c,00,70,00,5c,00,74,00,73,00,63,00,63,00,2e,\
00,63,00,68,00,6d,00,00,00
"AssemblyName"="tsconfig"
"RuntimeVersion"="v2.0.50215"
"Description"="Configure Remote Desktop Session Host settings"
"DescriptionStringIndirect"=hex(2):40,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,\
64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,\
00,5c,00,75,00,6d,00,63,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,\
2d,00,31,00,30,00,31,00,00,00
"LinkedHelpTopics"="%systemroot%\\help\\tscc.chm"
"NameStringIndirect"=hex(2):40,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,\
00,77,00,73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,\
75,00,6d,00,63,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,2d,00,31,\
00,30,00,30,00,00,00
"IconIndirect"=hex(2):40,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,\
00,73,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,75,00,\
6d,00,63,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,2d,00,31,00,31,\
00,30,00,00,00
"FxVersion"="2.0.1.7"
"Type"="Microsoft.TerminalServices.Configuration.SnapIn.TSConfigSnapIn, tsconfig, Version=6.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
"FolderBitmapsColorMask"=dword:00000000
"ModuleName"="tsconfig.dll"
"Provider"="Microsoft Corporation"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns\FX:{80aaa290-abd9-9239-7a2d-cf4f67e42128}\NodeTypes]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns\FX:{80aaa290-abd9-9239-7a2d-cf4f67e42128}\NodeTypes\{f86e6446-aaff-11d0-b944-00c04fd8d5b9}]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns\FX:{80aaa290-abd9-9239-7a2d-cf4f67e42128}\Standalone]
When the file is created, it time to add this information into the registry. Simply double-click the file. When the following dialog box is displayed simply click yes
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Then, another dialog box will be displayed confirming that these new registry entries have been added into your system…. Press OK
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Step 3 – Test your “old” new MMC console….
No need to reboot the machine. Simply click on the tsconfig.msc console and you should have the old admin tool up and running and usable….The screenshot below shows the tsconfig tool running on top of Windows 2019 Server…
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Running tsconfig.msc Windows 2019 Server ?
The tsconfig.msc used to offer some configuration options on the RDP-TCP object through a gui. The most interesting one would have been the security option where it would have been possible to provide more fine-grained rights on the Terminal Server. This is a screenshot of Tsconfig console on a Windows 2008 R2 server.
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If you click on the security tab, you can grant some generic rights to users and groups
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Going a step further, you can grant more granular rights if you edit the advanced security dialog box. You can see rights like logon/logoff, send messages, Disconnect,….
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Now, if we look at what we have in tsconfig running on Windows 2019 server, we see that the most interesting feature (security tab) is missing….. You can double-check…No Security Tab present here……
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So, added value for bringing back this console seems near to zero….Most of the options listed here are available in the RDMS console.
Click on picture for better resolution
Final Notes
That’s it for this post !
Voila ! We have seen how to bring back some of the old mmc Terminal Services console back in Windows 2012 R2 and later servers. The most interesting mmc console would be for use the Remote Desktops console that allows you to create a single console where you can connect to multiple rdp session. The next interesting option would be the tsadmin console where you can get easily query all servers in your infrastructure from a single console… The TsConfig console seems useless so we would not recommend to bring it back and install it… Remember that this configuration is probably not supported by Microsoft and you should perform such actions at your own risk !!!
We might want to go a step further with these posts. We might want to look at possible alternatives rather than bringing back these old consoles. We shall see if we will have time to speak about these topics
Till next time
See ya