Remote Desktop Client Asks for Login Username and Password - How to Disable this

Generally with time, newer versions of software get released. These releases are necessary to fix issues in the previous version and also to add new features.

However, sometimes the new features are not necessarily easily adopted. This can be quite evident when you have to re-learn what you have got into a habit of. Tell me, how many of your users (including you?) cried when trying to find the print button once you moved to Office 2010?

Remote Desktop Client (RDP) is one of the most used tools for any IT Admin. It gives you an easy way to connect to a server/computer without physically having to be there. But as of version 6, whenever you try to login to any server, before the client even initiates the connection, it prompts for the username and password. Now this can be ok, but at times you would rather enter the credentials at the logon prompt that the server shows on its desktop... well at least there are times when I would like that :)

I found how to do this using a tweak done on the default.rdp file. I thought I would share this so that others could benefit from it as well.

1. Locate the Default.rdp (located in your My Documents folder) file and open it in Notepad.
2. Add a line with the following
enablecredsspsupport:i:0
3. Default.rdp should now look something like below
redirectposdevices:i:0
authentication level:i:0
enablecredsspsupport:i:0
prompt for credentials:i:0
negotiate security layer:i:1
3. Save the file and then exit from Notepad

Now when you start RDP, you will not be prompted for your credentials.

Hope this comes in handy for those that have been nagged by this feature.
[the full document describing this tweak can be found here