How to redirect Serial Ports in Windows Server 2012 RDS/VDI

This tip came to me from a question someone posed internally that we had to find an answer for by hunting someone down .

 

This property isn’t exposed in Server Managers’ UI, so you can set it by calling this powershell command:

 

Set-RDVirtualDesktopCollectionConfiguration –CollectionName <farm> –CustomRdpProperty “redirectcomports:i:1”

Now the Remote Desktop Client will redirect its COM1 port to the Server.  Why is this needed?  Think Serially connected devices such as say, Smart Card readers, for instance.

Hope this helps!

The Dude

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Yeah let me check. You don't use < and > around My EMR Advantage If you have spaces use quotes, sorry I should have been clear in my post.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Jeff, we are having the same issues. Is there anyway to contact you direct?

• Anonymous
  June 14, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 07, 2014
  This begs a different question from me. With this PS command, COM1 is redirected, but what about a driver-required device on the client being set to COM9 (POS PinPAD, for example), that must be redirected through on that port?
  
  Will the RemoteFX USB device Redirection fulfill this need?

• Anonymous
  December 19, 2014
  Anybody who try to run this command on his deployment has to run it on the Connection Broker server.
  
  If you want to run it on one of your host servers then just add one more parameter to the end; -ConnectionBroker "FQDN"
  
  If your environment is session based you have to use Set-RDSessionCollectionConfiguration instead of Set-RDVirtualDesktopCollectionConfiguration. Rest of the command is same.
  
  PS: Don't forget to run powershell as admin!

• Anonymous
  June 09, 2015
  Hi,
  
  I'm currently wondering if it is possible to redirect specific com ports on the client machine to specific comports on a terminal server running Server 2012 which have consistant port mappings with each different session from the client to the server

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2015
  James might want to try a forum post on that for Windows Server 2012. I'm at a loss on how to do that stunt personally. Sounds like good info though.

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2015
  Brian, I was wondering the same, found this below:
  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff393694%28v=ws.10%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
  
  1 is on 0 is off. 1 means COM ports on local client are available for redirection, 0 means COM ports are not available.
  
  

• Anonymous
  March 04, 2016
  Thanks for the help(TheresNoTime), changing/adding "redirectcomports:i:1" worked for me

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2016
  Hey someone asked if they can contact me. I see our blog format changed....Um. jeff.stokes@microsoft.com is me!

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2017
  Does anyone know if this is possible in a RemoteApp setup and which command would i need to run? The Set-RDVirtualDesktopCollectionConfiguration is specifically for a VDI which we don't use. And i can't seem the find a RemoteApp version of this command in the ISE list.

• Anonymous
  October 10, 2017
  Is the purpose of this to allow com ports to pass through to another server? For example, we have an issue where we have thin clients that have a signature pad connected to them (through serial). The thin client connects to an internal RDS farm then from there, connects to another RDS farm. We'd like to be able to pass through the com port from the thin client to the 2nd RDS server. Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2017
    Hey sorry Chris, I don't work at MSFT anymore, but.... the purpose was yeah, for you to use the COM ports on a thin client/RDS session.