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Font Smoothing Available On Windows 2003 Terminal Server

Friday, 18 July 2008 by Michel Roth

You proably also thought that font smoothing was a feature that was new and unique to Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Well, as it turns out that is not the case. Microsoft has has this feature in Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services all this time! Here's how to "unlock it".

Gus Pinto actually pointed this out to me. All you need to do is install a hotfix to make the Font Smoothing in a Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services environment available. As you may know, Font Smoothing makes content look a lot better on LCD screens. Keep an eye out for your bandwidth though because Font Smoothing can eat up a lot of it.

Too enable Font Smoothing you need to install a hotfix. After you install the hotfix a new registry is added:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\TSEnableFontSmoothing

TSEnableFontSmoothing will by default now be set to "1" which means that it is one. If you want to disable it, just set the value to 0.
Note that you will need the Remote Desktop Client 6.0 on the client side to make Font Smoothing happen.

Download the hotfix here . View the associated KB article here .