Remote Desktop error in data encryption

7:26 am in windows by Matt Jenkins

Yesterday after fixing a mess with its active directory account I got a nasty error on a windows server 2003 box. Whenever you tried to connect via Remote Desktop, it threw the following error:
“Because of error in data encryption, this session will end. Please try connecting to the remote computer again.”

Searching google only suggestions of network device failures – which seemed unlikely seeing as the other 20 servers in that rack were working just fine over RDP. Eventually I came across this Microsoft solution: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=323497.

The solution is to remove the following registry keys:

• Certificate
• X509 Certificate
• X509 Certificate ID

From HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\TermService\Parameters\

And reboot the server.