Remote Desktop Manager 2.7 download

Update 24-6-2021: RDCMan 2.8.1 is available.  Please see here.

The venerable Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] 2.2 was starting to show its age.

After a slight hiatus, RDCMan 2.7 is now available.  Please say thank you to Julian Burger for the early Christmas present.  Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] is a great tool to consolidate multiple RDP connections into a single window to prevent desktop clutter.

RDCMan 2.7 supports Windows 8, 8.1, Server 2012 and 2012 R2.

The tool can be obtained from the Microsoft download centre.

Update 3-2-2015: Highlighting the note below as folks are hitting the download link and not reading the notes.  if you have the .RDG file in the installation folder, back it up before you upgrade to 2.7

Installation Pointers

There are a couple of things worth noting about the tool:

It will install into the x86 Program Files folder on a x64 machine:

C:\Program Files [x86]\Microsoft\Remote Desktop Connection Manager

Do not save your custom RDG files in the installation folder, just in case your local workstation dies and the file is gone.  In addition to this, upgrading the tool will typically remove the installation folder thus removing your .RDG file in the process.  All your connections will be lost....

I always keep my .RDG files in a  subfolder of My Documents, which is a redirected folder to a file server.

The RDG files are portable, and you can share them within your organisation.  For example, when you get a new admin give them a copy of the RDG files and they are able to review your list of servers and get connected easily – assuming they have the permissions….

The help file is located in a sub directory called Resources,  - unsurprisingly this is called help.htm

2.7 Fixes & Features

From the above help file.  Please review the help file for details.

New features

• Virtual machine connect-to-console support
• Client size options come from the application config file [RDCMan.exe.config] rather than being hard-coded.
• View.Client size.Custom menu item shows the current size
• View.Client size => From remote desktop size
• Option to hide the main menu until Alt is pressed. Hover over the window title also shows the menu.
• Added Smart groups
• Support for credential encryption with certificates
• Better handling of read-only files
• Added recently used servers virtual group
• New implementation of thumbnail view for more predictable navigation
• Thumbnail view remembers scroll position when changing groups, etc.
• Performance improvements when loading large files
• Allow scale-to-fit for docked servers [Display Settings.Scale docked remote desktop to fit window]
• Allow scale-to-fit for undocked servers [Display Settings.Scale undocked remote desktop to fit window]
• "Source" for inheritance in properties dialog is now a button to open the properties for the source node.
• Focus release pop up => changed to buttons, added minimize option.
• Added command-line "/noconnect" option to disable startup “reconnect servers” dialog
• Session menu items to send keys to the remote session, e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Del
• Session menu items to send actions to the remote session, e.g. display charms
• Domain="[display]" means use the display name for the domain name.

Bugs fixed

• Application is now DPI aware
• Undocking a server not visible in the client panel resulted in the client not being shown in undocked form.
• Ctrl+S shortcut didn’t work at all. It now works and always saves, even if there are no detected changes to the file.
• Shortcut keys didn’t work when focus was on a thumbnail.
• Add/delete profile in management tab. In same dialog instance, profiles are not updated. Similarly adding a new profile from combo doesn’t update the tab.
• Window title was not updated when selected node is removed and no new node selected [open a file, close the file.]
• Connect via keyboard didn’t always give focus when it should.
• Connected Group would always show itself upon connecting to a machine, regardless of setting.
• Selecting a built-in group then hiding via menu option didn’t work properly.
• Editing server/group properties did not always mark a file as changed.
• Non-changes could result in save prompts at exit. This should no longer happen.
• Activating the context menu via the keyboard button was not always operating on the correct node.
• Changing a server/group name doesn’t change window title if the server/group is currently selected.
• ALT+PAGEUP and ALT+PAGEDOWN hotkeys were switched. This is fixed for new installs—for existing files you’ll want to change on the [Tools.Options.Hot Keys] tab.
• /reset command line option wasn’t resetting all preferences
• “Server Tree” option from “Select server” focus release dialog didn’t show the server tree if it was hidden.
• New file directory now defaults to “Documents”.
• ListSessions dialog sometimes popped up in a weird location. Now placed within the main window

Finally and most importantly, please say a big thank you to Julian Burger the developer who wrote this and David Zazzo for working to get the tool released initially!!

Cheers,

Rhoderick

Finally we have good news for all fans of the Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] tool!    It has risen from the ashes, and is now part of Sysinternals.

Over the years RDCMan built up a strong user base as it was a simple but powerful utility to manage connections to multiple machines.  Sure, if you have three or four servers to manage you can get by with saved .rdp files or use the Universal Microsoft Store Remote Desktop app.

Have a few dozen?  That does not scale and you need a tool to help manage this.

Download Links

Here are a few options for downloading the current RDCMan builds.

Main page with related documentation

Remote Desktop Connection Manager - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

Sysinternals Live Site with direct download link

//live.sysinternals.com/RDCMan.exe

Microsoft AKA Vanity link

aka.ms/RDCMan

Documentation

The main Sysinternals download page has a lot of good content to review.  For those that are already familiar with RDCMan you can jump right in.

Just note that the current .RDG files will be upgraded automatically.

RDCMan History

I'll park this here for a bit of context and history for those that are interested.

RDCMan was initially an internal tool developed by Julian Burger and was stored on the internal toolbox site.  Word of mouth quickly grew and it became very popular internally.  Then customers noticed it being used for demos etc. and asked for a copy.  The work to release it externally started.  Legal, trademark, compliance and security all had to be reviewed as part of the release. This was done by Julian and David Zazzo who was an Exchange consultant at the time.  That is why you see the initial announcement on the EHLO blog.

Version 2.2 was the initial public release back in May 2010.  Julian continued to work on RDCMan, adding features and fixing issues.  There were many internal releases, again to the internal toolbox site,  but not on the public download centre.  Customers again noticed that the build information was different, and started to ask about a newer version.  This went on for a couple of years.

RDCMan 2.7 was released in November 2014.  Many features were added such as support for Windows 8 and Server 2012.  Julian continued to make improvements via some additional internal releases.  The release frequency slowed due to competing priorities, and then unfortunately Julian left Microsoft.  Development ceased on RDCMan.

Time went on and RDCMan really started to show its age with changes to display resolution amongst other issues.  No changes could be made.

Many, many people pinged me asking if I knew who was maintaining the tool and how it was moving forward.  There were some attempts to do so, but ultimately they did not bear fruit.

March 2020 hammered in the final coffin nail for the 2.7 version of RDCMan via the announcement of a security issue in CVE 2020 0765.

"An information disclosure vulnerability exists in the Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] application when it improperly parses XML input containing a reference to an external entity. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could read arbitrary files via an XML external entity [XXE] declaration.

To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker could create an RDG file containing specially crafted XML content and convince an authenticated user to open the file."

Since there was no support for RDCMan, the download was removed.   The world was sad.

As part of the removal, other tools were promoted.  You may have seen the page stating to use standard RDP of the Windows 10 Universal Client.

While those are supported clients, neither had the features that administrators wanted.  That was why RDCMan became so popular in the first place.  Some folks continued to use RDCMan and not open anyone else's configuration file, and others turned to 3rd party solutions with a range of results.  Some good.  Some not so much.

All seemed lost until Mark Russinovich tweeted this back in February 2021.

At this point RDCMan has celebrated its 10th birthday!

With Mark's support let's hope it has many more celebrations in the years ahead!

Cheers,
Rhoderick