Article ID: 270897 - Last Review: March 6, 2008 - Revision: 5.0

How Terminal Server Advanced Client connects to a Terminal Server computer

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This article was previously published under Q270897

SUMMARY

This article describes how Terminal Services Advanced Client (TSAC) connects to a Terminal Server computer. TSAC is an ActiveX control. To download TSAC, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e2ff8fb5-97ff-47bc-bacc-92283b52b310&displaylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e2ff8fb5-97ff-47bc-bacc-92283b52b310&displaylang=en)

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Make sure that Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 or a later version of IIS is running on a Microsoft Windows NT-based computer or on a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server-based computer together with the supplied sample Terminal Services Web Connection .asp page.

When you connect to the IIS computer that is serving up the Terminal Services Web Connection page, you are connecting over port 80.
Upon connection to the Web page, the ActiveX control is downloaded to your client computer.
From the supplied sample Web page, the name of the terminal server to connect to, or the screen resolution are passed as parameters to the ActiveX control. After these parameters are passed, the connect method on the control is called, and then a session is launched to the Terminal Server computer.
The client computer creates a connection directly to the Terminal Server computer by using port 3389.

Note The Web client is exactly like the version of the full client that is included with Windows 2000, without the graphical user interface (GUI). It obtains these properties from the Terminal Services Web Connection page, and not by any communication with the IIS computer itself.

There is no dependency between the IIS computer and the Terminal Server computer. If you cannot connect to the Terminal Server computer, follow these steps:

If you have customized the connection .asp page, try using the default .asp page that is included with the ActiveX control.
If you are still unable to succeed by using the default connection .asp page, try using the client that is included with Windows 2000.

For more information and for steps to troubleshoot Terminal Server connection problems, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

186645 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186645/ ) Troubleshooting RDP Client connection problems

For more information about how to script the TSAC, visit the following MSDN Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811527.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811527.aspx)

The original TSAC ActiveX control that was included in Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1) can connect only over TCP port 3389. However, you can configure the version of the TSAC that Microsoft released as security update 327521 to connect to other ports.

For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

326945 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326945/ ) How to change the listening port in the Windows Terminal Server Web Client

327521 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327521/ ) MS02-046: Buffer overrun in TSAC ActiveX control might allow code execution

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