Customer site is running Windows Server 2012 Essentials and a Windows 2012 Terminal Server. User contacts me to report that she was unable to connect into the Terminal Server from Remote Web Access (RWA). I tried, and got the same error message when I tried to access the Terminal Server:
The remote session was disconnected because there are no Remote Desktop License Servers available to provide a license. Please contact the server administrator
I knew it was not an RWA issue because I could RWA into the 2012 Essentials server. A quick search and I found a post that indicates that there is a bug with 2012 RDS session hosts where they will not look to the licensing server for CALs when the grace period ends. Although I would like a permanent fix, the following solution resolved the crisis at hand.
The solution is to delete a specific registry key relating to the grace period, and then reboot the server.
- Open up the registry editor on the Terminal Server
- Browse down to: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\RCM
- Make a backup copy of the GracePeriod registry key
- Then you can Delete the GracePeriod registry key
- Note: if you are not able to delete the key, you need to give yourself permission:
Right click on the GracePeriod key and assign ‘full control’ permission to the administrator account.
You should then be able to delete the key. - Reboot the server and check it out.