«
»

How to fix the ” The pre-release version of Remote Desktop Connection has expired” issue in Windows XP SP3

I tried to run the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection on a Windows XP computer today,  and got the following error:

 ”The pre-release version of Remote Desktop Connection has expired.  To download the full version of Remote Desktop Connection, go to Windows Update or contact your system administrator. ”

I ran “winver” and saw that XP had been taken to SP3 on this particular computer. I went to Windows update to see if it would pull down a newer version, but none was available. I also tried to manually download the latest client form the Microsoft downloads website. After downloading it, I was told that the service pack on the computer was newer than the version of software I was trying to install.

What I decided to do to fix it was to copy the RDP client files from another computer running Windows XP SP2. I copied the following 2 files from C:\windows\system32  and put them in the same directory on the broken computer, overwriting the 2 existing files.

1. mstscax.dll

2. mstsc.exe

After this I simply ran the software and it worked fine.

Tags: , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Windows XP, rdp, sp3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “How to fix the ” The pre-release version of Remote Desktop Connection has expired” issue in Windows XP SP3”

  1. Trog says:
    June 1, 2009 at 8:09 am

    Actually you need to replace the dllcache files as well.
    so copy the “lh” versions of the files from the dllcache
    (or make copies and add the “lh” in front of them)
    to prevent them from just being replaced by the dllcache
    versions

  2. Kumar says:
    August 19, 2009 at 4:03 am

    Thank U…

  3. Kindra says:
    April 13, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    Change your system date to before April of 2008 and it will work just as long as you dont rely on the system clock for any of your programs

  4. gurudatt says:
    April 14, 2010 at 11:25 pm

    Thanks a lot it worked :)

  5. elgobeto says:
    April 29, 2010 at 7:16 pm

    Hi All,

    Try with this version

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=72158b4e-b527-45e4-af24-d02938a95683

Leave a Reply