Recently a client accidently installed a product on their server that was running RDWeb access in Server 2008. The installation killed RDWeb access by installing a site in IIS on the SSL port. When we went into the Remote Desktop Services –> Remote Desktop Web Access Configuration, we would get an error that the service couldn’t initialize due to errors. The first attempt to fix was a simple removal of the Remote Desktop Service (terminal server) role and the IIS Web Server role. This, of course, doesn’t remove any files or change any IIS settings that are damaged, so the disabling and re-enabling  of these roles doesn’t fix much.

The solution in our case was to back-up the following files:

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config

administration.config , applicationHost.config and redireciton.config 

We then copied clean versions of those from another server with an untouched IIS. If you have access to another server, add the IIS role and go grab these files. Replace your ’bad’ ones on the server that’s been damaged. In addition we removed any files from C:\Inetpub that were related to RDWeb.

WARNING: in our case this worked since we only had an RDWeb site. If you have many sites on your server, this probably won’t work. You could attempt to find the settings related to each site in your ‘bad’ configs and bring them to the new one, but this seems risky. Remember, before trying any of this, back up the old files so at worst, you can replace everything anb be right back where you started.