Not only is Windows 8 a “weird” operating system (I am trying to avoid impolite language here) but it appears Microsoft is hell bent on breaking the “Windows 7 experience” for those of us who did not jump on their “tiles everywhere” bandwagon.
Today, I found out that in the name of Windows 8 support, Microsoft disabled some basic features in their update to the Remote Desktop Protocol on Windows 7. For starters, they disabled “Aero remoting”, so if you are accessing another Windows 7 computer, you will no longer see the transparency, etc. effects. But at least this “improvement” is documented.
Not so the other change: installing RDP 8 disables the “TSCLIENT share”, which is how Windows XP programs that run in Microsoft Virtual PC access files on the host computer. This is extremely annoying for people, myself included, who rely on Windows XP Mode to run older applications. Yes, there are workarounds (including the obvious one, which is to uninstall the RDP 8 update) but I still don’t understand why Microsoft messed up this feature in the first place. Let me just say that this is not the best way to make people like Windows 8 some more!