Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server

Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server








The inability to connect to an XP or windows 2003 server computer using RDP with a color depth higher than 16 bits is a default setting on the remote computer. It can be chanegd on the remote server or XP desktop. No reboot is required t osee the results of the change. A goup policy change on the remote computer or in a domain group policy object klink to the domain or an OU can be applied.

making the change to the local policy or to the domain policy will allow connections to with true color 24 bit rdp.

A pre-defined default limit on XP or windows 2003 server limits the color depth of RDP connections to 16 bit maximum. How to configure the "server side" of remote desktop to accept connections at 24-bit true color.

Windows 7, Vista, and server 2008 already allow higher that 24 bit color by default.

Get outlook web access OWA working without reboot on II6 Exchange 2003

The system service with a process id of 4 on 2003 servers listens on port 80 and 443. I checked this with another 2003 exchange email server to be close to sure of that being correct. It too has the system service, not an IIS service, with process id of 4 listening on 80 and 443.

I changed the port the default web site uses on the problem outlook web acess (OWA) web server to 81, restarted the services. Still couldn't connect with localserver:81 but now telnetting to port 80 worked. Just get a blank line is displayed when telnetting to port 80 (II6) unlike smtp that sends some text. Before the change to 81 for the default web site, the error returned by telnetting to port 80 was "connection refused". Changed the IIS default web site back to 80 saved, restarted the IIS service again and the default page loads and the OWA page also loads. As of now, no reboot of the server is required. Hope the fix holds.

Could try this solution on other servers that have IIS not responding and of course leads to OWA not working. Don't know if the same solution applies to 2008 server with exchange 2007 or 2003 server with exchange 2007 but some varient of the steps might just do the same.

This exchange 2003 server's access via port 80 (default web browser port) was working fine then suddenly IIS and OWA stopped working. I've seen this all too often over the years and ussually meant the server had to be rebooted.


PC Tech Go - Blog Home
Permanent link to this post - Get outlook web access (owa) working without server reboot

Acronis Disk Director 10 - My Review and Opinion

Acronis Disk Director 10

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 combines several other previous Acronis disk management tools into a single solution:

Partition Manager allows you to move, resize, copy, merge, and split partitions without losing valuable data.

Boot Manager is a utility software to create a multi-boot environement. It allows you to install multiple operating systems on your computer PC.

Partition Recovery allows you to recover accidentally deleted or lost drive partitions.

Disk Editor is a repair tool for disk drives. It allows you to perform advanced hard disk operations, such as restoring boot records and hexadecimal editing.





I had the opportunity to actually see Acronis® Disk Director Suite 10.0 in action. It was simply amazing as I watched a partition get re-sized almost instantly. what would have taken several hours to complete by reinstalling the operating system then also installing the applications on the computer to get to the same point.

It was the easiest and most convenient partition manager and hard disk toolkit I've seen. I thought partition Magic was a great partitioning software, Acronis made partition magic look child like in it's ease of use and the way it did not falter at all.

With the creation of this suite of disk utilities, Acronis brings together the most popular boot disk manager, partition recovery tools, and disk management functions in one installation package. I thought it was a great product and would recommend it to anyone who needs to resize a partition and it could do a whole lot more.