Windows Installing Remote Desktop Connection Managing director as limited user

Installing the Remote Desktop Connectedness Director requires ambassador privileges. That can be a problem in a corporate surroundings where you might not have local administrator rights. Fortunately, there is an easy way to overcome this limitation by performing an administrative installation.

Administrative Installations

When you install an MSI package, yous tin tell msiexec to perform an administrative installation instead of a regular installation. During an administrative installation, msiexec extracts all files embedded in the MSI files, just does non apply whatsoever configuration changes that a regular installation would apply.

An administrative installation tin can serve multiple purposes, the most important being:

  • By serving the extracted files on a network share, client computers tin perform installs, repairs, and reinstalls of the respective package without having to download the entire MSI over the network.

    If the MSI is simply a few MB in size, serving the extracted files might provide little reward over simply putting the MSI file on the file share – merely in the case of large MSI packages, being able to directly access selected files might speed up the installation process.

    Today, fifty-fifty this speedup might be negligible. But back in the days when disk space was deficient, some MSI packages allowed certain features to be advertised simply. These features were then installed on first use – and having a file share that contained the extracted installation media could make a real difference in how fast this on-demand installation could exist performed.

  • Like to advertizing a feature, Windows Installer allows features to exist run from source. In this example, the files are not copied to the local disk at all simply read from the network share remotely every time they are needed. Again, the idea is to save disk space on the client computer.

Today, disk space is rarely an issue, so features like advertised installs and run from source have by and large lost their appeal. However, administrative installations are still a handy style to extract an MSI file. And for simple applications like the one for the Remote Desktop Connection Manager, extracting the MSI packet is all that is needed to "install" the awarding without requiring authoritative rights.

Installing Remote Desktop Connection Director

Perform the following steps to install the Remote Desktop Connection Manager to your local user profile without administrative rights:

  1. Open up a command prompt.

  2. Create a new directory to install the Remote Desktop Connectedness Manager to:

    md %APPDATA%\RDCMan && cd %APPDATA%\RDCMan

  3. Download the installer and save the MSI to the Downloads directory

  4. Run the installer:

    msiexec /A "%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\rdcman.msi" TARGETDIR="%APPDATA%\RDCMan" /l* install.log /QB!

    Notice the user of the post-obit command line switches in the command:

    • /A instructs msiexec to perform an administrative install
    • TARGETDIR specifies the directory to extract files to
    • /fifty* Enables logging
    • /QB! Performs a GUI-less, silent installation

  5. Now run the following control to view the extracted files:

    explorer .\program files\Microsoft\Remote Desktop Connectedness Managing director

    Discover that all files accept been extracted to the directory. You lot can now apply RDCMan by running rdcman.exe.

    RDCMan files

Installing the Cloud IAP plugin

With the Remote Desktop Connection Manager installed, you tin can now install the Google Cloud IAP for Remote Desktop, again without administrative rights:

  1. Download the plugin and salve the MSI to the Downloads directory

  2. Run the installer and specify the installation directory of Remote Desktop Connection Manager as TARGETDIR:

    msiexec /A "%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\CloudIap-Plugin-i.1.37.0.msi" TARGETDIR="%APPDATA%\RDCMan\program files\Microsoft\Remote Desktop Connection Manager" /l* plugin-install.log /QB!

  3. Now run the following command to view the extracted files:

    explorer .\program files\Microsoft\Remote Desktop Connexion Manager

    Notice that all files have been extracted to the directory. You lot can now utilise the Remote Desktop Connexion Manager with the Cloud IAP plugin by running rdcman.exe.

    RDCMan files

– Thanks for your feedback!

Whatsoever opinions expressed on this blog are Johannes' own. Refer to the respective vendor'southward product documentation for authoritative information.

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