Windows: Server 2003 RDC error: “The RPC is unavailable”

8/23/18

Back in the beginning on August I was at a client site and I came upon this weird error after a power failure on a Windows Server 2003 R2 Terminal Server and I was puzzle for a while until I create a posting on technet and got this tidbit of wisdom.

  1. Open up “regedit”
  2. Navigate to this hive locations: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server”
  3. Create a new key selecting Dword and rename it as “IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors”
  4. Then double-click on the value and enter in a value of 1.

RDC worked for me. This got rid of the error message and the profile loaded.

I guess this was a workaround to an issue after R2’s last service pack and after EOL for patches as this was a Microsoft response to the problem. Not sure how many people still use 2003 but hey, every little bit helps. Hope this helps someone.