Password change option also available in RD Web Access on Windows Server 2008 R2

A while back I posted about one of the new features on RD Web Access in Windows Server 2012: an option to change your password by using RD Web Access.
http://microsoftplatform.blogspot.nl/2012/03/rds-in-win8-feature-highlight-no_12.html

It seems that this option can also be made available on RD Web Access based on Windows Server 2008 R2.The option is not there by default but can be enabled by running a patch on your RD Web Access server.

Remember that the password change feature can be accessed by opening the password.aspx page, so for example https://<ServerName>/RDWeb/Pages/en-US/password.aspx. On a RD Web Access server running Windows Server 2008 R2 this file is not there be default.

The patch that creates the necessary files is:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2648402

Note that the KB Article does not really mention the fact that the password change option is also added. It’s actually related to fix a different, although somewhat related, issue.

The KB Article does however mention the passwords.aspx file.

After installing the patch (and a reboot that is required) the password.aspx file is created.

To enable the option we need to set a variable in IIS (the same as with RD Web Access Windows Server 2012).

After that, we’re able to browse to the password.aspx file and successfully change a password.

Thanks goes out to Alexey Astashin for pointing this out to me and updating the TechNet Wiki.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10755.enabling-the-rd-webaccess-expired-password-reset-option-in-windows-server-2012.aspx

RD Gateway and logon attempt failed errors

A new blog post by the Remote Desktop Services team blogs.msdn.com discusses fixing the logon attempt failed error when trying to connect to a RDS farm through the RD Gateway.

"...To resolve this issue, locate the HTTP redirection setting and disable it:

1.In Server Manager, on the RD Gateway server, open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2.In the IIS navigation tree, expand the server and the sites, and then select Default Web Site.
3.In the middle pane (the settings area), double-click HTTP Redirect.
4.Clear the Redirect requests to this destination check box.

After completing this, single sign-on was working externally as well, but the question remained: “How can I enable the redirection?” I didn’t want to manually type in http://contoso.com/rdweb because I wanted to use http://contoso.com/ instead. After doing some research and getting help from my colleagues, I found that it could be done by just making a small change, detailed in the following steps.

To redirect HTTP:
1. Open IIS Manager.
2. Go to the RD Web Access website (by default, it’s the “Default Web Site”).
3. In the middle pane, click HTTP redirect.
4. Select the Redirect requests to this destination check box, and type the address for your website; for example: http://contoso.com/rdweb.
5. In the Redirect Behavior section, select the Only redirect requests to content in this directory (not subdirectories) check box.
6. Apply settings...."

For the complete blog post see:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2011/09/07/how-to-troubleshoot-logon-attempt-failed-messages-when-connecting-through-rd-gateway.aspx