Identify Possible Licensing Problems for the Terminal Server

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

Terminal Services Configuration for Windows Server 2008 includes the Licensing Diagnosis tool. Licensing Diagnosis provides information to help identify possible licensing problems for the terminal server.

Each user or computing device that connects to a terminal server must have a valid Terminal Services client access license (TS CAL) issued by a Terminal Services license server.

A terminal server must be able to contact (discover) a Terminal Services license server in order to request TS CALs for users or computing devices that are connecting to the terminal server.

The primary purpose of Licensing Diagnosis is to determine which license servers the terminal server can discover and whether those license servers have TS CALs available to issue to users or computing devices that are connecting to the terminal server. In addition, Licensing Diagnosis will try to identify any possible licensing problems and provide suggested resolutions to those problems.

Use the following procedure to run the Licensing Diagnosis tool.

Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at Local and Domain Default Groups (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477).

To run the Licensing Diagnosis tool

  1. Open Terminal Services Configuration. To open Terminal Services Configuration, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, point to Terminal Services, and then click Terminal Services Configuration.

  2. In the left pane, click Licensing Diagnosis. Licensing Diagnosis will automatically run and try to discover license servers and identify licensing configuration problems, and then display the results.

There are four main sections to Licensing Diagnosis:

  • Terminal Server Configuration Details, which displays configuration information about the terminal server, including the licensing mode and discovery mode that have been specified for the terminal server.

  • Licensing Diagnosis Information, which displays any licensing problems that were identified along with suggested resolutions to the problems.

  • Terminal Services License Server Information, which displays the license servers that were discovered by the terminal server.

  • License Server Configuration Details, which displays configuration information about a license server, including the type and version of TS CALs installed and available on that license server.

To view the configuration details of a selected license server, the account that you are logged on as needs administrator privileges on the license server. If your account does not have administrator privileges on the license server, you can use Provide Credentials in the Licensing Diagnosis tool to provide credentials that have administrative privileges on the license server.

Important

To view the configuration details of a Windows 2000 or a Windows Server 2003 license server, you must provide the credentials of the built-in local Administrator account on the license server. The credentials of any other account, even if that account has administrator privileges on the license server, will not allow you to view the configuration details.

For more information about Licensing Diagnosis, see the Terminal Services page on the Windows Server 2008 TechCenter (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79607).

Additional references