Windows 7 and RDP Color Depth Setting

With Windows 7 comes Remote Desktop v6.1.7600.

I have seen a lot of posts where people want to reduce the color depth to 256 colors, which is not allowed via the Display Tab - Colors. Doing some research i found that if you have a “saved” rdp connection, you can open it in notepad and modify a specific field to allow you to run in 256 colors or 8-bit.  See below for the example text, the rest is easy

Here is an unmodified RDP File, i only included the first 4 lines, as that is all that is relevant.

screen mode id:i:1
desktopwidth:i:1152
desktopheight:i:864
session bpp:i:15

Notice the session bpp:i:15, change the 15 to an 8(as below) and save the file. Re-run the RDP connection and you will now be in 256 colors or 8-bit.

screen mode id:i:2
use multimon:i:0
desktopwidth:i:1152
desktopheight:i:864
session bpp:i:8