Microsoft Remote Desktop Services / RDS website errors from a Windows 8 machine or a system with Internet Explorer 10 or 11. You get the below error:

Browser Not Supported - This Web browser is not supported by RD Web Access. RD Web Access requires Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. You can download the latest version of Internet Explorer from the Windows Update Web site.

This is caused by Microsoft not releasing an update to 2008 to allow it to be accessed in the later browsers. In order to get it to work we can implement a workaround that forces machines with newer browsers to access the site as IE9 compatibility view.

NOTE: First of all this fix ONLY works on RDS Gateway servers with 2008 R2 SP1 installed. If you try it on a server without SP1 it will get rid of the error but you wont see any remote apps.

1. Login to the RDS Gateway server.
2. Open up IIS Management Console.
3. Branch out the sites and then left click on RDweb. On the right hand side double click on HTTP Response Headers (under IIS section).
4. On the right hand pane now right click and select Add...

On the box that appears enter:

Name: X-UA-Compatible


Value: IE=9

Now do a IISRESET on the server and you should be good to go. If you have any pending Windows updates also install these as sometimes it won't work until they are installed.

As an interesting side note, when you load the web site now, you can hit F12 and look under Emulation and you’ll see that IE9 is the default Document mode due to the Header you just created.

Compatibility View (not recommended)

The quickest way to get this work would be for the user to set Internet Explorer to use Compatibility Mode, but we don’t recommend you do it this way for a couple reasons.

For one, it is not readily apparent how to do this in IE11 (it’s under the Settings cog wheel). Also, using this will set IE11 to render the page as if it were IE7, which is pretty ancient and not ideal if you can avoid it.

Another challenge with this is when attempting to add the host to the “Compatibility View” list it will actually add the whole domain, not just the rdweb url, so it could impact rendering of other web sites that you don't want to use in Compatibility mode such as “www”, or your sharepoint site, etc.

F12 Document Mode (also not recommended)

Another suggestion, which works but we do not recommend using either, is to hit F12 to open the Developer Tools (also available under the cog wheel) and scroll down to the “Emulation” tile to set the Document mode. If you try using 10, you will see your apps, but the Icons will be blank or missing. Instead, set the Document Mode to 9.

This will cause IE11 to render the page as if it were IE9, and then your apps and icons will appear and work fine. But this is still not a great solution, because now you have to tell your users how to use the dev tools in IE. It’s cumbersome and just not something your typical user should have to deal with.