Re: Problem accessing smart card reader via Remote Desktop

From: Jim Miller (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 09/09/04 

Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 15:21:37 -0700

[since this topic is almost a couple of weeks old I
thought I post my reply as a new topic so it doesn't get
overlooked]

I've seen some unfortunate behavior when testing smart
cards used within remote desktop connections to 2003
servers. If the 2003 server has 'terminal services for
users' enabled then the built-in PC/SC redirection works
ok, but if only 'remote administration' is enabled (which
is the default), then apps in the remote admin session
(i.e. session id > 0) get the error 'The Smart card
resource manager is not running' when they call
SCardEstablishContext. Don't know why because it shows up
in the Services tool and session 0 apps are able to
successfully call SCardEstablishContext.

I suspect the smart card resource manager doesn't support
multiple sessions unless 'terminal services for users' is
enabled. This would be unfortunate if true for it would
prevent remote administrators from authenticating to the
2003 server with a smart card.

Any word from one of you Microsoft people on whether the
above suspicion is true?

Jim Miller

>-----Original Message-----
>We have a computer with a smart card reader for belgian
id card connected,
>which contains a test id card.
>
>I can only develop for this card when sitting native on
that machine. If I
>do a remote desktop connection to that machine, and start
the belgian id
>tool, I get the error message "Problem getting the reader
and card names".
>
>Unfortunatly I must be able to do that remotely.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks.
>.
>
.