Running 32bit Remote Desktop Connection on Windows 64 bit

On Windows Vista 64 and Windows 7 64, there is a 32 bit version of Remote Desktop Connection (Microsoft Terminal Services Client, mstsc.exe) in %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64.

Running this mstsc.exe will launch the 32 bit process but it will instantly launch the 64-bit mstsc.exe from System32 and shut itself down. This makes it impossible to run Remote Desktop Connection 32 bit.

This is a problem when you have 32 bit Terminal Services add-ins (which won’t run under 64 bit).

Solution: Rename the 64-bit mstsc.exe from System32 to prevent it from replacing the 32-bit process.

This is simple if you have rights to rename that file. If you’re on NTFS you may get a “You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this file” error.

To get by this error, you can take Ownership of the file and give yourself full permissions:

1. Browse to %SystemRoot%\System32
2. Right click mstsc.exe and choose Properties
3. Go to the Security tab
4. Click Advanced
5. Go to the Owner tab
6. Click Edit
7. From the “Change owner to:” list, choose your user name
8. Click OK
9. Go to the Permissions tab
10. Click Change Permissions…
11. Click Add
12. Enter your user name and click OK
13. Tick the box in the Allow column for Full control
14. Click OK
15. Click OK
16. A Windows Security warning will come up; click Yes to proceed
17. Click OK

Now, you can rename the file mstsc.exe to something like mstsc.exe.bak

Then, you can launch mstsc.exe from %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64 and you will have 32-bit Remote Desktop Connection running.