It is so damn irritating. I think I must be the only person to ever alter the RDC port of certain machines to port 443 in order to connect to them from networks that do not support 3389. But the thing is, if that particular machine is Windows XP Professional with IIS 5.1 running, it inconsiderately refuses to let go of port 443. Yup, I so need to use SSL on workstation machines so badly that IIS decides there is no reason in the world why I won't use it.
So why not disable the option in the IIS interface? And stick the tongue out and taunt me?
If the GUI way does not cut it, here's the programmatic method to beat it into obedience and grab a new binding.
cscript c:\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/1/securebindings ":8000:"
where 8000 is the new obscure port number to use.