Hi,

I have a customer that has a couple of Windows 8.1 Pro computers, that has a smart card reader in the local keyboard.

Until a few months ago, they could RDP to the desktop computer from a RDP client such as another Windows PC, a Mac or a mobile device.

The problem is now that when accessing the desktop computer (with the smart card reader keyboard) from a RDP client, the smart card reader is not available in the RDP session anymore. This prevents them from logging on to an application in the network that requires their smart card.

Can someone perhaps point me in a direction where this can be solved, either with the MS RDP host or with some 3rd party RDP host applications?
(Teamviewer or similar remote support applications works, but that is not what the customer want...)

Since it worked like a charm up until 2-3 months ago, there must have been some update to Win 8.1 that prevents this by default?

Thanks in advance,

/Mikael Forslund

Hi Mikael Forslund,

I am supposing you attempted to use smart card reader connected directly to Remote Desktop terminal. Basically your RDP session should redirected smart card reader to the client side and will not see readers connected to the host side because enable Safety equipment such like smart card reader will cause highly insecure and that is not by design.

We suggest using smart card reader on local RDP client for your issue.

The reverse is also true; if you RDP into a session from the start you will never see any local smartcard readers as Winscard will detect its running in an RDP session and no calls to Winscard will ever reach the local PC/SC layer everything will be redirected to the connecting client.

Quote from this TechNet article

http://blogs.technet.com/b/instan/archive/2011/03/27/why-can-t-i-see-my-local-smartcard-readers-when-i-connect-via-rdp.aspx

Similar case has been posted and for your reference

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/47972083-b9bd-49fd-8708-b296af81bda3/usb-smart-card-reader-and-smart-card-connected-directly-to-remote-desktop-server?forum=winserverTS

Regards

D. Wu