Remote Desktop Connection Manager 2.2 Clear Text Gateway Passwords?

So if you are like me and want to save your RDCM rdg file in a central location you will have to store your passwords in clear text. I do this so I can share the RDG file across multiple machines. By default, gateway passwords are encrypted in your RDG file preventing you from opening it on another machine. However if you edit the RDG file in a text editor you can make some simple changes to disable the encryption.

Find the line <password storeAsClearText="False"> and switch it to <password storeAsClearText="False">. Replace the cryptic characters between the <password> tags with your password, save the file and you should be good to go.

Additionally, you'll also have to store your login credential passwords in clear text. There is a check box builtin to RDCM that allows this.

You need to take special care to make sure your rdg file is in a secure location as your passwords to your rdp clients will be visible in plain text.

SCCM 2012 SP1 Operating System Installing to the D: Drive

When deploying a Windows 7 image using SCCM 2012 SP1, I noticed that the drive that it was defaulting to install to was D: and not C:. After a little head scratching I found a new variable that was added to SP1 called OSDPreserveDriveLetter.

Here is the official word from Microsoft.com as to what the OSDPreserveDriveLetter is used for:

OSDPreserveDriveLetter: This variable determines whether the task sequence uses the drive letter on the operating system image WIM file. In Configuration Manager with no service pack, the drive letter on the WIM file was used when it applied the operating system image WIM file. In Configuration Manager SP1, you can set the value for this variable to False to use the drive letter that you specify in the task sequence.

Here is how I fixed my issue. I had to manually set the OSDPreserveDriveLetter variable to false by adding a Set Task Sequence Variable as shown below.



Next I set a drive letter variable for the sequence.



Then this variable can then be used in the Apply Operating System task.



Now when you run your OSD, Windows 7 should install to the first drive letter C: drive instead of D:.