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:
- Browse to %SystemRoot%\System32
- Right click mstsc.exe and choose Properties
- Go to the Security tab
- Click Advanced
- Go to the Owner tab
- Click Edit
- From the “Change owner to:” list, choose your user name
- Click OK
- Go to the Permissions tab
- Click Change Permissions…
- Click Add
- Enter your user name and click OK
- Tick the box in the Allow column for Full control
- Click OK
- Click OK
- A Windows Security warning will come up; click Yes to proceed
- 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.