Enabling Terminal Services ActiveX on IE7

As great as Windows 7 is turning out to be, many companies with Server 2008 Terminal Services Web Access (or plans to move to Remote Desktop Services in the near future) will likely have users connecting from home with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7 for foreseeable future. However the Terminal Services ActiveX control required by TSWA is disabled by default in XPSP3 as a security measure. This control in needs to be explicitly enabled in IE7 in order to use the web access features of Server 2008.

Usually you can enable or disable an ActiveX control in IE using the "Manage Add-Ons" tool, but it's likely that you willl be unable to see the TS specific control in IE7 on XP SP3 in that tool. The workaround is to delete the two following keys from the registry:

• HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{7390f3d8-0439-4c05-91e3-cf5cb290c3d0}
• HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{4eb89ff4-7f78-4a0f-8b8d-2bf02e94e4b2}

Once you delete these keys, the required ActiveX control should be enabled in IE7.